Inappropriate Monkeys

I have to go off on human beings today and our bizarro reactions (to..what? puppies? cute dogs?). As I’ve said before, I did some concentrated work with Elli greeting strangers. She’s done really well, but I’ve gotten some of the weirdest damn reactions to her. [I forgot to tell you the stimulus for people's reactions. What we do is: I tell Elli to "say hi" and she goes up to people and sits...waiting to be petted and get her treat.] Two of these reactions are being repeated so often that they are obviously somehow hard-wired into our freaking monkey brains. These particular behaviors are happening so often, they are undoing all our good work. Telling people off (even to ‘stop!’) or pulling her away will not send Elli the right message at ALL. [Really, I want knock people away from her and yell "you moron!". I think I need to teach her a 'turn away' like they do with dog-reactive dogs. Maybe we should learn to just be around people and say 'no' when people ask. Elli is just fine with walking up to someone and soliciting an absent-minded petting. Teach her to deal with idiots by ignoring them and only have knowledgeable people help us practice a 'formal exam'.]

When I tell people who ask to pet my puppy, that she was afraid of strangers and she’s learning to tolerate them, don’t you think they’d be gentle?? That’s what I thought I was telling them…to be gentle. I believe it’s Elli’s face. Right from day one to the present…a whopping 60% of people look into her sweet face, melt into those gorgeous brown eyes and… grab her ruff with both hands, jam their nose into her nose, and “cootchy coo”. Yep. Happens all the freaking time. How clueless do you have to be to grab a strange dog? How stupid to grab a dog you’ve just been told is wary of strangers?? As far as I can tell, there’s no marker signal for me to sort these people out from the general population. You know, so I can can protect her…so I can say “NO, you ass, you can not ‘pet’ my dog.”

The other thing is even weirder. Now that she is older…bigger, some large percentage of former face-jammers don’t try to jam their face into hers, instead they look into her sweet face, melt into those gorgeous brown eyes and… stick out their hand and order her to “shake”. Really. Weird enough they want her to “shake”, but even weirder…they really do order, not in a nice voice, but actual military tones. If she doesn’t respond, they do it again. And again. They act like they are getting mad…she’s being disobedient? And she won’t shake…because, as I would TRY to tell them, she doesn’t know that one! I haven’t taught her to “shake”. It actually took a few times before I could try to explain…staring with my un-comprehending jaw on the the floor before I realized they were for real. After the first teaching effort, I put off “shake” for later with Elli. More important things to do first. I hate “shake” anyway. There are much cooler, useful, tricks. Some dogs aren’t “shake”-ers anyway. Some take to it immediately and it’s fun for them….Kaia & Joe are “shake”-ers. Others think you’re up to something…you have to carefully, even gently, teach the behavior. Mesa & Elli are not “shake”-ers. Elli has no idea what these people are doing! In dog language they are being very very rude. [Hard eyed stare, in her space, challenging bark] She takes it as presented and attempts to protect herself. Really not good.

Inappropriate people actually encouraged our, already vertically-gifted, Kaia to jump. (When I tried to teach her to jump into my arms like Mesa, she actually jumped onto my shoulders.) People would also encourage Mesa’s cute, fuzzy puppy, wiggle butt to jump on them. Her reaction was to jump…usually for their nose. As a result, I had an absolutely horrible time teaching Mesa to hold still for the CGC and the stand for exam in obedience. Thanks, really inappropriate people. “She’s so cuu-ute! Oh I don’t mind if she jumps! Comere puppy!” OH! If I only had a dollar for every person who said “that’s ok! I’m used to it, my dog jumps on me all the time!” To this very day I can’t rely on her good behavior when greeting. It wasn’t so bad with Joe. People looked deeply into his round yellow eyes…and stepped back. He is just as much of a luv-a as the girls but I think people were disconcerted by his eyes. It slowed them down a little. One thing I can count on, thanks to the kindness of strangers, Elli is never going to jump on them.