“He’s just being friendly” …

… said the lady as her little terrier determinedly shoved his nose in my dog’s faces.

We had an ‘encounter’ with a little black terrier earlier this week. We were on our morning walk, minding our own business, all dogs walking beautifully on lead and to heel – just as I always aim for it to be, although in truth it’s not always the case! A lady was approaching us with a little black dog running around. On spying us the little dog decided it wanted a closer inspection of this ‘pack’ of fine looking collies, so set off at a fair pace towards us. Not a problem, the ‘pack’ are fine. Little terrier did not hold back with it’s inspection, it went straight in and shoved it’s nose right up to Womble Bum’s nose. She growled and snapped at him, just in time for the lady to see. In a tone of complete indignation she said “he’s just being friendly, there was no need to snap”. If there’s one thing that’s certain to annoy me, it’s this. “But he’s not being friendly” I explained “he’s completely lacking in manners and expressing the height of doggy rudeness and has quite rightly been told off”.

It reminded me of an excellent article written by Suzanne Clothier, entitled He just wants to say “Hi!”. She starts off the article with the scenario of herself sitting on a bench with her husband when a strange man sits down next to her, too close for comfort, she moves closer to her husband who’s pre-occupied. When the stranger starts groping her she yells and slaps him. She’s then immediately thrown to the floor by her husband who shouts “he’s only being friendly”. I believe that anybody who owns a dog, or anybody who is thinking of getting a dog, should read this article.

The lady with the little black terrier misguidedly walked away under the impression that I was rude, my dog was aggressive and should have been disciplined, and her little dog was a sweet little darling that had been misunderstood. On reading the article she would be prompted to think that maybe her little dog was rather rude, and the dog that snapped was perfectly entitled to tell it off as it came way too close into her personal space. A must to read article, it can be found at http://flyingdogpress.com/content/view/42/97/.

The rain has arrived … and so too the mud, a bit of a shock after such a long spell of nice weather. There hasn’t been a lot of training going on this week, although the dogs really don’t care what the weather is, with the exception of the Arctic Fox, aka the Mud Magnet. If there’s wet and dirt to find then she’ll find it. She’s had a lovely time today splashing around in mud. I do hope the weather improves, I’m already fed up of dirty doggy towels.