The Incident, Part II

Many years ago, right after we bought our house and got Nelly, we moved in with a friend for a couple of weeks while we had some remodeling work done. Our friend had a very sweet dog named Sunny (may she rest in peace), the most loving, playful, non-dominant dog on earth. She had absolutely no interest in being the boss of anyone. As opposed to Nelly, who still hopes to get the Ring of Power and make us all love her and despair, or even Toby, who wouldn't mind being the boss of somebody, but dude? It just takes too much time away from waxing his board, you know?

At that point we only had Nelly, and she and Sunny were great friends because Nelly could be as bossy as she wanted, and Sunny would just be all: peace out! behold my belly. And then they'd run around the yard and gnaw on each other until they were both exhausted and covered with slobber.

But one evening we humans were startled by the terrifying roar of a dog fight, and we rushed to the kitchen to find that Nelly had Sunny flat on her back, pinned to the floor at the neck. It appeared that Sunny had the temerity to suggest that Nelly stop eating her food, because even hippy love dogs have boundaries that begin at the food bowl. We banished Nelly to the bedroom and disciplined her in the firmest ways we could imagine. Sunny's whole body was shaking, a sight I will never forget, to see an animal trembling like that in shock and fear. She was uninjured, and I wouldn't have blamed my friend for being very upset; but she was very gracious.

Within half an hour, the dogs were the best of friends again. You would never have known anything had happened. All of the humans, however, remained utterly traumatized, and for a long time - I mean YEARS - we referred back to this in hushed tones as The Incident.

So, fast forward. While we were in France recently, we engaged our friends' kids to come by the house and let the dogs out each afternoon. The two older girls have been gradually shedding a long-held fear of dogs, while the younger one has, seemingly from birth, adored all animals with the burning fierceness of the sun. The elder girls are just old enough to start taking on small jobs for money, so we hired them to stop by each day with their parents just to let the dogs out in the yard for a bit.

It's striking to me how completely normal behavior for children just happens, by sheer accident, to be incredibly rude in Dog Language. Kids hug and drape themselves over dogs, a gesture that is an extreme assertion of dominance in Doggish. Kids are short and therefore look dogs right in the face, showing their teeth in a big smile, which is downright threatening to a canine. Kids do all this while speaking in high-pitched (i.e. submissive) tones, sending a confusing mixed message of subordination and dominance. I frankly marvel that there aren't more dog-bite incidents involving kids.

We've trained all our friends' kids to focus on Toby because, we explain, Nelly is old and achy and doesn't like much attention. Toby may not like the hugging, but his tolerance appears to be without limits. And even so, sometimes when our young friends are draped over him in an expression of ecstatic love, Toby looks at us with a puzzled and pleading look that says: Why is this small human acting so rude?

Our friends all came by the day we returned from France, and were bursting to tell us how much they Love the dogs! And are such good friends now! We chatted with their mom about the trip over the din of girls running around with the dogs. I heard the littlest girl say, "Nelly doesn't like as much petting as Toby," and that probably should have gotten my attention. Then I noticed that two of the girls had Nelly cornered, and one of them was leaning over her, holding her head firmly between her hands, staring her in the eye with their faces not six inches apart, murmuring sweet endearments. And even as my brain said "Danger!", there was a growl, and a snap of teeth, and then wailing.

Nelly did not bite. She just growled and snapped, which is actually standard Doggish for "you are making me feel threatened and anxious, and I really need you to stop doing what you're doing." It is the canine equivalent of using your words - asking your sister to please stop pestering you while you're trying to read, instead of just punching her in the head. I have no doubt that Nelly first tried saying this politely in Doggish - flattening her ears against her head, probably trying to break the threatening eye contact despite being caught in a head-lock - and I also have no doubt that she had no intention of biting. Because the whole reason wolves evolved complex communication is to avoid actual conflict or violence, which only weakens the pack. In the ten years I've known Nelly, I've only seen her snap at a person four times - and once was at a veterinarian shoving a kennel cough vaccine up her nose, which seemed kinda fair.

BUT. But. Despite all this rational logic, I cannot stop feeling badly about this. I felt badly even as our friend B., the Mom, matter-of-factly reviewed with them all the ways that the girls had contributed to this unhappy event (after first verifying that no actual biting had taken place). She reminded them that they had been studying animals in school and learned that cornering an animal almost always makes it afraid, which makes it dangerous. I imagine there are plenty of parents who would've just whisked their kids out of there and vowed never to let them near our vicious beast again; so of course I'm relieved that B. was so gracious about it.

But despite all that, it's been a week and still, I look at Nelly, and I think about The Incident, Part II, and I feel badly.

Tomorrow I'm taking care of the girls for the afternoon, so I'll be interested to see if there is more processing. I want to treat this with just the right level of seriousness, neither minimizing nor overdramatizing. Kids do need to learn how to behave around animals, and Americans are notorious for absurdly anthropomorphizing our pets instead of respecting them enough to treat them like animals. Just as we have a reputation for ignorance about the language and culture of other peoples, we often can't be bothered to learn the ways of the animals who live among us, expecting them to simply acculturate and conform to human ways; we become surprised and frustrated when they persist in being dogs, or wolves, or bears.

I can recall being actually bitten as a kid, on the nose, on two separate occasions, by dogs belonging to family and friends, and here I am all grown up with two of the damn beasts in my house. So I hope that years from now, I may still be talking in hushed tones about The Incident, Part II, while these girls will be grown-up young women, perhaps with a dog of their own as a best friend.