Love your neighbor as yourself, huh?
Not so easy. On this gorgeous spring (almost) morning, I took Chester and Winnie for the longer walk around the field. Knowing that we might run into some other dogs, I took plenty of pepperoni pieces to distract Chester, who can be quite overprotective and go into barking and lunge mode with strange dogs. He’s become slack about trail behavior over winter and needs a refresher course. But I was prepared this morning, and we were walking on a trail that requires canines to be on a leash, which helps when meeting strange dogs.
Sure enough on our way back I saw we were approaching two owners and two black labs. I went into action and started feeding the pepperoni treats to Chester. Of course, he knew something was up and looked for the dogs in between chewy bites, but food is better than anything else to him. We moved off the trail slightly to give the group room to pass. He was sitting quietly with his nose in my hand waiting for it to open and offer a tender morsel.
That’s when all hell broke loose. The two labs were not on a leash, so they came bounding up in their friendly way to investigate. It was Winnie who started lunging and barking as they tried to sniff her and that was too much for Chester. He joined in. The labs did their own share of barking and growling now and my dogs charged… all 45 and 55 pounds of them. Guess who was dragged foolishly after them?
The lab owners managed to grab their dogs and move on, acting a bit as if all this was my fault. Meanwhile Chester looked at me expectantly for more treats. After all, his eyes asked, he had done a good job protecting me, right? And I glared at Winnie; she’s supposed to be the calmer dog and she started it all…if you don’t count the off-leash provocation.
So today I am trying really hard to love those two lab owning neighbors as well as my own charging dogs. As for the former, I’m trying to put myself in their shoes. After all, their dogs never run off and are friendly to everyone. Most labs wouldn’t hurt a fly. Perhaps that’s why today’s owners wondered why they should obey leash laws when the trail winds through woods and field. It is a beautiful thing to watch a dog run free. And how would they know that Chester was attacked by a neighbor’s black dog once and does not have the capacity to forget a hard lesson learned? From their perspective, my dogs were unfriendly and out of control. They had no idea that two strange black dogs running straight for two protective dogs is more instinct than one woman can control. And in the dog frenzy there was no way for me to speak to them and clarify matters.
So while I am trying really hard to love my free ranging neighbors, I am also trying to figure out how to alter my route for tomorrow morning so that we will walk back by a different way. I’ll work on the command for the dogs to turn and quickly follow me the opposite direction, no questions asked. I’ll try not to envy the easy life of a lab owner, and yes, I will always love my adopted rescues with their personal demons.
After all, God manages to love me with all my personal demons, warts and all. It must be a hard job being God! It’s a hard job being a dog owner.
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