This weekend I was sick with fever and aches, so yesterday morning I forced myself to get up, have my tea, and begin working in my office.  I was still a little feverish but didn't want to spend another day in bed.  Besides, it was Monday.

So around 11:00 some of my dogs start alert barking.  That does not happen too often, as we live out in the country, on five acres.  So I get up to look and my neighbor's adult son was driving up on his ATV.  He wants to talk to me!  I'm still grimy from fever and can't think clearly so I run in and throw on some people greeting clothes.

As I walk toward the door I see our neighbor's son standing at the window just next to the door, looking in.  All my dogs are on full alert barking up to high heavens.  In my stupor I was thinking that he had never been inside our house before and so he was taking advantage of my slow arrival by getting a good eye full.  My dogs were highly aroused by this large man looming about just outside the window.  And I was irritated that he would be so inconsiderate as to not see that my dogs were all agitated, and could he not just step away so that they might feel more comfortable?

But of course someone not schooled in dog behavior wouldn't think that way.  My neighbor's son, I'm sure, wasn't even thinking about the dogs barking.  He knows my dogs and knows they haven't hurt him in the past, and that's that end of it.  Dogs bark.  That's what they do.  End of story.

This reminds me of the time my Postmaster was outside the Post Office having a smoke off his cigar when I parked alongside the building in the shade.  He looked at my dog Wakelee, who is 100 + pounds, and he began to walk over, looking at Wakelee all the while.  We live rurally, and a person approaching our vehicle looking at Wakelee hardly ever happens. Wakelee launched off into a threat bark.  WooWooWoo.  Our postmaster, being a Normal Person, thought this was hilarious and so he continued approaching and as he got close up to the window he began to make threatening gestures.  Wakelee flipped out.  I motioned our (very nice, by the way) Postmaster to GO AWAY as I was holding Wakelee, trying to protect what I could of the interior of my car.

Our Postmaster immediately left, and once inside the post office he profusely apologized.  He said he didn't know what came over him.

I do.  He's human and he doesn't know.  People so often just don't know.  A dog is, well, a dog.  Dogs don't think... although sometimes they sort of seem like they do.  Dog's don't have emotions.... although if you think about it, sometimes they sort of seem like they do.  But people too often don't put it together, and sometimes people put it together in the wrong way.

Well, I took this opportunity to educate our very nice Postmaster about dog behavior.  I told him that I understood that he didn't know, but actually Wakelee is a fearful dog and over the years he has grown much more trusting of the world around him. I explained that direct eye contact was often a threat, or challenge, to a dog, and that approaching a dog in a straight line was further a challenge.  Not only that, Wakelee being inside a car, was trapped.  He had no where to go, and so had to do what he could to try to make this threat go away.

I'm not really sure exactly how much of what I said sunk into the Postmaster's embarrassed mind.  He just knew he did something 'wrong' and that was probably enough for him, but I still had to try to get the dog's point of view into the picture.  It's only fair.

I remember late last year, being up in Medford, Oregon.  Eric and I were coming out of a store and I saw a woman approaching the vehicle parked next to ours, which was just fine, except that she had a dog in her car which meant: dog lover. She saw handsome Wakelee and turned to face him.  He made one grr-bark and she immediately turned away and I saw her smile.  As we approached our car she made mention of what a beautiful dog we had, and she showed us her dog, just right there next to our car.  Everything was fine.  She understood, and Wakelee must have known that she understood.  She spoke his language.  "Oh, you feel threatened?  I'll just not pay any attention to you, and you can look at me all you want, until you feel safe with me, if that ever happens."

Yes!  That's right!  If only everyone would understand.

Since I'm on the subject, I also remember one time some years ago when a friend of ours approached our car while we were at the gas station.  He peered into the window and Wakelee, who was lounging on the back seat, saw him.  I saw Wakelee tense his muzzle and scrunch it up a little.  Our friend saw this as a direct challenge to him, and so made himself bigger and more present.  Wakelee got up and scrunched his muzzle some more and growled.  Wakelee knew this person, and I imagine he was just issuing a polite warning without the full on display of lunging and barking and snarling.  But our friend was schooled in the dominance way of interpreting and reacting to dog behavior and so made himself into an even bigger challenge ("I'm not backing down!") and so Wakelee began to lunge.  And our friend, not wanting to be standing at a gas station with a dog lunging at him, walked away.

This was a dog person.  He's owned dogs for most of his life, and he does wonderful, wonderful service to dogs, helping in any way that he can.  He just didn't know.  And unfortunately, when you are dealing with dog people, some of them, well, you can't educate them because, well, egos might be involved and all and it gets a little touchy.  We don't want to get into "I know more than you" disputes, and also, if someone has their philosophy down pat, your input isn't really wanted.

But from my point of view this was stupid.  Here is a person Wakelee knows, and so he issued a polite warning "hey man, you're in my space, do you mind?"  And rather than fostering a polite interaction of "oh, sorry man, let me just back off here, and I'll see ya later" it's met with "I'm the human here: DEAL WITH IT... I'M THE BOSS, I'M THE ALPHA."  Now, Wakelee carries with him a complete knife set at all times (teeth) and he also has some strong vocal capabilities that he's not shy to use.  He doesn't think 'oh, I'm in public, I'll just tone it down here'.  No, he goes into a full on launch at the car window, and so the human is embarrassed, and probably a little frightened, and so leaves.

And that is how learning takes place.  Wakelee was polite, it didn't work.  Wakelee lunged and barked and this worked.  The dog savvy friend just reinforced Wakelee for lunging at him, teaching Wakelee what works and what doesn't work.

Oh, behavior is so complex!  I'm not faulting anyone here.  These are all just examples of different behaviors exhibited by people, by the "folks" aspect of Dogs and Folks.  People just don't know.

If we would live in an area where this behavior would surface more often, I would work with it.  As it is, Wakelee hardly ever launches at people, and so I feel the energy used to try to modify this behavior is just not worth it.  Also, with the great spaces between when this behavior happens, I'm not sure a behavior mod program would even take hold, unless I kept practicing it all the time.  It just doesn't seem important enough to me at this time, although I do cringe and wish it wouldn't happen when it does.

I have to mention that Oregon has a law that you cannot pump your own gas.  What a wonderful thing!  Many gas station attendants give out dogs biscuits.  Wakelee has not one single time barked or lunged at a gas station attendant, no matter how long or how often he peers into the window.  Wakelee falls over himself to make friendly contact with all gas station attendants.  Unfortunately we live a few miles over the border, in California, so Wakelee doesn't get to gas up in Oregon as often as he'd like.

So back to my neighbor's son's approach yesterday.  All went smoothly, of course.  I simply slipped out the front door and when his focus shifted to me I began to control the space, as I also often do with my dogs.  I moved in a way that made my neighbor's son walk away from the house, using the human's tendency to follow, and then I also moved him back by slowly taking the space between us.  That is, as we spoke I moved closer to him, ever so gently, so as not to be impolite, so that he would move back just a tad.  Once he was positioned in a good place, the dogs relaxed and settled down and probably even went back to sleep.