The Little Bear Dog Blog

I can just hear my grandmother now. ‘Pride comes before a fall my girl.’  As if an evil goblin was following me around making copious notes and deciding when to bring me down a peg or two.  ‘Ha! There she goes, bragging about that dog again, better blow a bit of set-back dust at her; teach her not to be so smug.’

The goblin struck on Christmas Eve. But I can’t blame magical creatures, it was all my fault.  We had a house full of people and not just any people but a collection of the dogs favourite, treat bringing, cuddle delivering types. They were hyped up to somewhere and didn’t know which of their favourites to make a fuss of next.

When another one of their other favourite people turned up with her young daughter in tow Little Bear completely forgot himself and got really anxious.  I wasn’t quick enough and when she went to stroke him he growled and barked at her.

To her immense credit she was utterly calm and even went home and made him a card to prove that she still liked him in spite of his lack of manners.

I on the other hand was mortified and devastated in equal measure.  I saw our months of training on the school run sail out of the window and had nightmares filled with doom and destruction. I berated myself for my stupidity, flailing myself raw with the memory for days. That’s me. Just like Bear, I’m over-sensitive and err on the Eyeore as opposed to the Tigger.

Where to now?

But I’m a wanna-be Tigger so I’ve forced myself to see it for what it was. A highly charged situation in a confined space that I read as enjoyable simply because I was enjoying myself. What I wasn’t doing was reading my dogs well enough. Annie was relaxed enough and just followed whoever had food, but Little Bear clearly wasn’t comfortable.  My screw up, not his.

So what do we do now?  There’ll be some revisions to the training plan but we’re going to go back to basics and start over.