yeeeeeeeeeeeep, and there's only so much time you can allot to pinning back the ears of adolescents who think they have much more social power than they really do, either.
I always think of the time I brought a six-month-old pointer puppy to a dog park--I would have been maybe thirteen or fourteen--and she decided she knew how to play because of all the time she'd spent bossing around our older Jack Russell Terrier around. So she took off at full speed at this middle-aged Rottweiler who was sniffing another dog, barking like a fool, and I was all heart-in-mouth because I was fully expecting this to trigger a big dog fight.
The Rottie braced himself, chest-slammed her, and knocked her off balance and sent her spinning off into the dirt, and then went back to whatever he was doing without batting an eye. It's one of the moments I think of as one of the most socially ept, kind things I've seen a dog do, ever--I would not have blamed him for starting an *actual* fight over it, because fifty pounds of baying pointer puppy yelling and racing at you would certainly have been enough to make me startled and think I needed to fight for my life. But he wasn't threatened, and he had the presence of mind to treat her like a baby even though she was acting like a threat--but not a baby so small that he put up with her crappy behavior.
I worry that the kids these days aren't getting enough of the early socialization, and that there aren't maybe enough adults who have the lack of trauma to identify what they're doing, identify that they're idiots, and summon the emotional wherewithal to send them spinning off into the dirt on their asses so they get shocked into learning better. I have no idea how to do that any better than I actually do, though.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-01-22 09:23 pm (UTC)I always think of the time I brought a six-month-old pointer puppy to a dog park--I would have been maybe thirteen or fourteen--and she decided she knew how to play because of all the time she'd spent bossing around our older Jack Russell Terrier around. So she took off at full speed at this middle-aged Rottweiler who was sniffing another dog, barking like a fool, and I was all heart-in-mouth because I was fully expecting this to trigger a big dog fight.
The Rottie braced himself, chest-slammed her, and knocked her off balance and sent her spinning off into the dirt, and then went back to whatever he was doing without batting an eye. It's one of the moments I think of as one of the most socially ept, kind things I've seen a dog do, ever--I would not have blamed him for starting an *actual* fight over it, because fifty pounds of baying pointer puppy yelling and racing at you would certainly have been enough to make me startled and think I needed to fight for my life. But he wasn't threatened, and he had the presence of mind to treat her like a baby even though she was acting like a threat--but not a baby so small that he put up with her crappy behavior.
I worry that the kids these days aren't getting enough of the early socialization, and that there aren't maybe enough adults who have the lack of trauma to identify what they're doing, identify that they're idiots, and summon the emotional wherewithal to send them spinning off into the dirt on their asses so they get shocked into learning better. I have no idea how to do that any better than I actually do, though.