Well that was fun...

So I took my dog to her Monday night very basic training for the fifth (sixth?) time tonight.

Earlier today, I put her through all that we've learned so far. We were outside at the time, off lead. And she did very, very well. She sat, she stayed, she lay down, she did a down stay, she came when called, she spun in circles and danced on her hind legs. All on command. It was amazing. I could not wait to get to class to show all the progress we made.

Apparently, somewhere in the parking lot of the training facility, her brain fell out. I'm not even kidding. I watched her IQ drop as we neared the entry, and it just plummeted further the longer we were there.

She couldn't stay to save her life. Hell, she couldn't even figure out how to sit anymore. Walking nicely next to me? Not hardly. Evidently she couldn't figure out what that invisible force was that was holding her back and causing her to choke. Forget about getting her to lay down. But it managed to go even further downhill from there.

Today's new lesson was on how to properly "greet" a strange dog. Oh boy.

First, we have to establish if the other dog is friendly or not. We do this by asking the owner "Is you dog friendly?" If they answer affirmatively, we have to explain that we're trying to allow our dog to do a quick greeting as part of their training. I suspect we're not supposed to reply that our dog is decidedly NOT friendly and perhaps they should move their wussy dog out of our way so we can get back to the training room where it's safe. Whatever. We allow our dogs to touch noses and then move on. If either dog shows any sign of aggression, we're supposed to step between them, turn our dog away and walk away until she calms down.

If they answer negatively, we don't allow them to greet at all, we just go look for the next vict.., er dog.

So what happens if the owner is a clueless idiot who doesn't know what qualifies a dog as "friendly" to other dogs? Well, then Cujo comes out to play.

The first dog we asked to greet was an old, overweight pug. His eyes were busy looking in different directions so I was pretty confident that even if he wasn't nice, I wouldn't have a problem pulling my dog back. But he was really sweet and not at all aggressive. The dogs touched noses, the pug peed on a nearby shelf, and we moved on.

The next dog we asked to greet was a young, very exuberant pit bull mix that had no manners at all. We were told that she was "friendly" but I don't think they understood what we were looking for. Because the dog growled at my dog and put her paw on my dog's head. And my girl? Well...if she could speak it would have been:

"Bitch! What the hell was that? Did you just put your foot on my head? Oh no! No, you did NOT just put your damn foot on my head! I will KILL you! Kill you until you are dead!"

Only in all capital letters and with more attitude. And then I had to walk to far corner of the store with my dog yelling threats and throwing gang signs back at the other dog the entire way. I think that went as well as expected.