Today's Sunshine

Monster and I had a couple of kids stop by for a while today. One of them is Monster's most favorite friend/toy in the world, and the other is an incredibly annoying teenager who just can't hear words like "Don't rile him up, he gets too excited!"
(I hope you're reading this, Teen Monster. But then again, it wouldn't do any good...)

Oh, boooo! I think they're fun!!!

Having Monster around kids always makes me nervous. Not because he's vicious or defensive, but because he loves them so much his size becomes a problem. He wants to play, he wants to cuddle, he wants to show them all his toys, and his brain just short circuits trying to do it all at once. He'll run around in circles, bumping into people, throwing toys around, and trying to get up to lick faces... It's nice that he's so friendly, but I still have to watch carefully and try to manage the situation, because while he doesn't mean harm he can still cause harm.

Oh, come on! PLAAAAY!!!

But today, he was practically mellow by our standards! Sure, he tried to sit in their laps when they sat down, and he fetched some things to show off, and he wanted some kisses, but he was much less intense. His movements weren't the near panicked bumblings of trying to do it all at once, and he was slow enough to give us a chance to see what he was doing before he rammed into us.

(This makes it sound like I'm just standing around watching Monster mow people down left and right, crossing my fingers and wishing on a star he'll stop soon. Of course I do actively try to manage his behavior. I don't have a big enough basement to bury the evidence if I would just turn my back and hope for the best every time someone walks through the door...)


And to top it off, when we walked them out to the car as they were leaving (for any chance of peace and quiet Monster needs to see people leave - if they just walk out the door he'll keep waiting and searching for them for the rest of the day - so we always follow guests out and watch them drive away), a dog was passing by just across the road. This would ordinarily be a very bad situation, the dog being so close to our home, it being dark out, Monster being already wound up from playing with the kids, plus a chance to show off/defend his guests. But while Monster did tense up slightly, and start to fixate a bit, he didn't move up to acting out aggression. He turned away when asked, and followed me walking in the other direction. He did want to look back, but even when I turned around and walked us closer to the other dog he still paid attention to me and dropped his interest when asked to do something else.

Obviously this doesn't mean he's cured, but it's still nice to get a little encouragement out of thin air like this. It's going to work.