Fun with Dogs!

Jellybean had quite the day yesterday.  First, I had my daily walk crew and Jellybean out at a local park which was absolutely full of teenage boys taking the last day of school as a ditch day apparently.  Every single boy had a wheeled object of some sort from skateboards and scooters to actual motor bikes.  One of the kids was walking down the sidewalk and stopped to pet a client’s dog and asked me what kind of dog Jellybean is.  I told him she is an Australian  Cattle Dog and when he tried to pet her I said, “sorry, she’s just not friendly with people” and stepped between them whereupon he stepped AROUND me and again attempted to pet her!  As he finally turned to walk away, Jellybean started to follow him with that shoulders down I am a hunter kind of walk which I found extremely worrisome!  That is not at all the type of confidence I would like Jellybean to develop!

Next, when we were dropping off two of our charges I invited a client Jellybean has met three or four times to ask Jellybean to do a simple Sit, Down, Sit, Say Please routine for treats in my long running attempt to get Jellybean to understand that other people have value.  I demonstrated the hand signals and the routine and when my client attempted to duplicate it she stepped right into Jellybean’s space and bent over her saying, “sit sit sit” without the hand signal or anything!

And then, I had Jellybean at my mother’s house where one of her friend’s came out to meet Jellybean (long story and it isn’t as though I think this poor woman actually wanted to meet Jellybean) and as we walked up to my truck I said, “Jellybean is very afraid of other people so if you can just completely ignore her I would appreciate it” whereupon the woman immediately stuck her hand inside the open window of the vehicle right into Jellybean’s face!

Ugh!  On the up side, Jellybean did not  bite any of these people and actually seemed somewhat interested in all three of them so that is progress but on the down side…WTF!  I just do not understand people!  I recounted our day to a friend last night and she immediately said that I needed to start asking people to bend over my fearful dog and shove their hands in her face because obviously people are going to do the exact opposite of what I ask them to do with poor Jellybean ;-)