Before you “not all men” me: of course, not all boomers…
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Putting fresh sheets on the couch actually requires zero dogs….
Boomers largely grew up with dogs. They were something you just had, much the same way you had kids and they were treated much alike: they were supposed to be quiet, well behaved and functioning, and the means to achieve that was violence. Becoming adults, many of them stopped having dogs but not children, but the children were still raised much the same. Maybe the belt was replaced by the bare hand, but violence was still very much the preferred method of “teaching” kids. Gen X and Millenials mostly put a stop to this, making grandparents catch up with the 21st century or cutting them off and protecting their children.
While not every popular trend in current child rearing is actually good, today’s parents are much more consciously thinking about how they want to raise their children. Many read books or go to parenting classes. While they may not always achieve it, they do want to raise their children without violence and trauma. And actually, much the same is happening with dog training. We don’t just expect dogs to function. We see them as creatures with both needs and also somelevel of understanding. We actively learn how to interpret their body language correctly. A wagging tail does not mean a happy dog. A wagging tail means an excited dog, but not whether he’s positively excited or actually upset. (With Socks you can tell a genuinly happy wag by the fact that he’ll also wag his entire butt. Which is extremely cute.)
If the boomers didn’t choose to keep dogs, there was no such pressure on them to catch up with the time. Or as my dad said: “We didn’t have doggy school back then and we didn’t need it. You kids these days.” Enter my father in law, who is like the poster boy for a certain kind of old white man. Not the virulently capital letters Racist or Misogynist, just the ordinary type. A guy who got through life by simply ignoring things he didn’t like, who got his family to not contradict him or have fights with him by being loud. A guy who never had his beliefs challenged. Back to the topic: a guy who thinks he knows how to handle dogs, even though he hasn’t kept dogs in 60 years.
Socks is still learning many things and one of them is to tolerate people in “his” space. He’s a rescue who has finally found his safe place, a rescue who, like almost all rescues, has an issue with big loud men, and a kokoni, who was bred over two millenia to protect the home. This means that when people enter our home who have not been added to his expanding list of trustworthy humans, he is often insecure. That means barking and keeping his distance, but it also means giving warning signs. Growling, showing teeth, snapping at the air. Which my father in law all takes to mean “please keep getting closer, especially reaching over me with your big hands and try to touch me, preferrably on my head”. And no matter what you say, he’ll keep doing it. The father in law, not the dog. The dog is much more teachable. This is the way biting happens, but of course it’s the dog who gets blamed then.
I am no expert on dogs, but my approach to other people’s dogs is to first ask the owner about the dog, then to let the dog approach me first, and after that, I let them sniff my hand. And if both the dog and the owner agree, I can pet the dog. This approach works, dogs mostly like me.
What Charly said.
You have my deepest sympathy Giliell, this behaviour (the man’s not the dog’s) is so frustrating. We had it with one of our friends who Would. NOT. Listen. when told not to touch a dog. He got away with it with Thorn who he tried to touch when I went to put the kettle on, I came back to find her hiding behind the sofa she had been sitting on. “I just tried to stroke her”. I gave him what for, and never left him alone with him again. I saw my role with her as very much protecting her until she was ready to explore whatever, and if you respected that it did bring rewards, eventually; one friend who we went on holiday with regularly had to wait seven years but she got her willingly given cuddle in the end and was ecstatic, very, very quietly ecstatic so as not to frighten Thorn off, but absolutely beaming and she still talks of it years later. First friend got his comeuppance when he tried the same touching with Jake when I wasn’t looking -- I hadn’t made the mistake of leaving the room, but turned away for a couple off seconds. Jake was the dog who’d been taught not to growl, so he air-snapped instead, and this was before we’d taught him growling was ok again. I didn’t see what happened, but I did hear a yelp from the friend and turned round to see him using both hands to protect his balls. Again I was not sympathetic, he was damn lucky Jake didn’t bite down, but I felt part of my responsibility in owning a dog like Jake was to protect him from being in a situation where he needed to warn anyone off and I was angry the friend had been so fucking stupid. The ‘friend’ did not come to the house again, and I’m fine with that.
I have no useful suggestions, apart from trying to keep Socks and your FiL separate, some people just will not learn
Charly and chigau, that is of course the sensible way to behave, but it amazes me how many people behave as if any dog out in public is public property to manhandle as they wish. This was a very real concern with Jake as if he had air snapped and made contact he could have ended up being put down. I have on occasion had to body block men ignoring me when I said ‘No, don’t do that’, and I’m pretty assertive so I wasn’t murmuring it; they all then berated me for having a ‘dangerous dog’. Mr J never had that problem, but then he’s tall and well built so I don’t suppose they fancied their chances, even though he isn’t at all violent. Sorry, bit of a rant there, but good on you two!
Charly and Chigau
Yeah, that’s because you’re sensible people who do not feel entitled to physical contact with other beings.
Jazzlet
Socks has some serious “pretty privilege”, thankfully. He’s a small to medium dog and cute as a button. But yeah, with bigger dogs the risk of the dog suffering some serious consequences for the humans fucking up is much bigger.
Socks is doing better with people all the time. The list of people who are allowed to topuch him is getting bigger and bigger, he just needs some time.