 Traumatic holiday weekend!
Sydney had a bad weekend!
We decided to take her with us to the july 4th parade. She was being soooooo good and I was soooooo proud of her...Until. A family decided to set up camp near us with a 6-7 year-old boy. Now Syd is terrified of kids...but I want her to get used to them so usually when we encounter a kid I hold her and ask the kid to pet REALLY gently. This worked fine with this kid...however he wouldn't leave her alone. She was hiding under my lawn chair out of fear and the kid was trying to crawl in after her. I pointedly said to his mother (who was watching all of this) that her son was scaring her...hoping that she would make him stop...but no! Next thing we knew Syd had managed to slip out of her harness and was trying to run away. Needless to say we left right away. I am temped now to tell kids that my dog bites. So much for trying to be polite.
Once the weekend was over Syd seemed very relieved that things were back to normal. She is such a creature of habit that she almost sighed with releif yesterday when I came home from work and asked her if she wanted to take our usual walk. About halfway through our walk we encountered a pittbull mix. Being the good dog-mom that I am...I picked her up and the pittbull's owner politely crossed to the other side of the street so that we could walk in peace. But of course...my dog (who thinks she's tough) started chewing out the pittbull the second she hit the ground. Next thing I knew the pittbull had managed to pull his leash out of his owners hand and was barrelling down on my dog. I hauled her up in the air by her harness...and managed to completely surround her with my body. Now...I'm not very tall...so the pittbull had his feet up on my sholders trying to sniff at my dog...meanwhile she was trying to climb up on top of my head just to get to higher ground! In hindsight the pittbull didn't want to hurt her...he was just trying to sniff her. The owner ran over and pulled his dog off of me and apologized many times. But both Syd and I practically had heart attacks!
Hopefully is finally back to normal for real now! |