[vent] Overly friendly strangers need to go away.Dog Talks

Overly friendly strangers need to go away.

This just happened and I’m still annoyed.

My long haired chihuahua is nearing the end of his puppy days but still scares easily. He’s gotten better and as he’s grown older, I’ve been slowly introducing him to new things (new routes for walking, new public places, even exposing him to noises such as lawn mowers.) He’s still a little weird about strangers.

Because of his size and the kind of dog he is, people are always cooing at him. It’s actually ok; I don’t mind as it helps him get better used to people outside. He prefers women and depending on his mood, he’ll be ok with someone trying to say hi. I don’t want to make him too uncomfortable so we’ll usually do a quick hello and keep walking unless he’s interested.

Anyway, this is where tonight becomes part of this post. Doggie and I have a routine that took forever to get into. I walk him around the same time, and before I do I put his kibble in his bowl. Once he sees the kibble is available, he goes to the door because he likes to potty before he eats. (Sometimes he’ll go to the door first but I’d rather not wait in case he has an accident.) Today, we did our usual and I took him outside. I decided to go a different way.

After sniffing around a bit, he finally found a patch of grass that he deemed suitable for pooping. He had just gotten into the poo squat when some guy passing by said in a loud voice, “Looking for somewhere to potty?” Of course, my dog became startled and jumped. I’m not sure if he even got to use the bathroom. He started growling (understandably so) and the guy started trying to pet him! I tried to divert my dogs attention, but he was not happy.

After a couple of minutes of this, my poor pup started shaking. I picked him up and the guy finally got the hint that my dog didn’t want to be bothered. I said he was just scared. I don’t get why people think it’s ok to force a dog to love on them even when the dog clearly isn’t interested. If that had been a bigger dog or even a human child, that stranger would have left us alone.

I’m also ticked that someone interrupted my dog’s bathroom time while he was mid-act. That would be like finally getting to the toilet and having some jerk barge into the bathroom. I know the obvious answer would be to tell the stranger to leave the dog alone, but I just wanted to rant. Now I have to take him out an extra time just in case. I know there’s no way to cure stupid but that whole thing was so annoying.

Submitted November 07, 2020 at 01:37AM by theglorybox https://ift.tt/2I9NIVI