Today's Cloud

While out on our walk today, we happened to meet Boots again. You remember him, the man who lets his two dogs play with Monster (and thinks I'm vastly exaggerating Monster's issues).

Hello, remember me?

Apparently there's a family down the street with two dogs with some aggression issues, and Boots has volunteered to straighten them out. Personally I don't really see the point in having someone else work your dog for you, I don't think that will fix much, plus the methods used aren't the kind I'd recommend. But they are trying something after all, and I certainly can't demonstrate an amazing result from my convictions (yet), so to each their own.

However, Boots was walking one of these dogs today along with his own two. She's an older bitch, a little smaller than Monster, and apparently known as the scourge of the village 2nd to Monster (I've never noticed her, but I kind of have my mind on Monster when we're out, especially if there are other dogs around). Boots first walked up to us and introduced the dogs to each other, and then joined us on the path we were walking. My concerns at Monster's clearly stressed behavior went, I believe, completely unheard. Both Monster and the new dog were very explosive in their movements, they were playing - mostly - but in a way I consider unhealthy. Boots quickly let all his dogs off leash, and when we reached an open area expected me to do the same. This I completely refused. As we were talking we'd stopped walking, and I noticed some tension between the new dog and one of Boots' dogs. I pointed this out, but he believed they were playing. Things escalated into a staring match across a water filled ditch, with very tense body language, no blinking and lips pulled back. Monster became very agitated by the behavior of this new dog. She wasn't challenging him, but he clearly didn't care about the finer points. I pointed out that things were about to go south with my dog, regardless of whether he thought things were fine in his group. He told all the dogs to knock it off (further agitating Monster, but that's of course not something I expect people to make allowances for), and sent them out into a field. There the new dog began chasing Boots' dog, in a way which did not appear friendly, but he remained convinced they were fine. While I was trying to point out the situation as I saw it, the two dogs finally clashed and went down in a cloud of teeth and snarling. Monster went from "I don't like this." to "Alright, time to die!"...

Boots soon managed to separate the dogs, but Monster was beyond calming down at that point. Boots kept putting himself between Monster and the new dog, and I had to keep asking him to move as this only served to agitate Monster further and risked Boots getting bitten. The new dog was still off leash, and came up to Monster repeatedly, so I had to struggle with holding him so he couldn't get to her. I tried to explain to Boots that he really needed to keep her away from us, because Monster had taken quite a bit of offense at her attacking a friend of his, and there really was a danger he would hurt her. We finally parted ways there, and I dragged Monster off into a tractor track.

Oh, looks so nice and peaceful...

In situations like this I get quite frustrated that I can't raise my voice or be more assertive. But once Monster has started spiraling, if I sound or act anything other than calm and sweet he's going to lose it completely.

I'm sure Boots is a very nice man, and I'm sure he genuinely feels I'm handling Monster completely wrong. But that's probably part of the problem, because I feel his methods are wrong, and I think we keep talking past each other...

Anyway, once we'd put some distance between us and the gang, I just stopped in place and waited for Monster to calm down. It took about ten minutes, but he did eventually sit down, sigh, and look at me. Time well spent I think. After that he was almost as usual on the walk, except for when we were almost home and he spotted Boots and the dogs again a few streets over. Alert! Alert! Oh well, no crying over spilled milk.
(But I should learn to stop spilling it, though...)