Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Venting

OK...I just have to vent. Last night I taught a puppy class at a local pet supply store. During the class a familiar face rounded the corner with her 2 pit bulls. It was a face I knew from various dog events. A pet person with ZERO dog handling skills. My stomach sank as she waved hi and was peeking at the class in session. First, I must say I am not breed bias...I have many friends with pit bulls and see some great pits come through the shelter. I am also not naive to the power of these dogs and personally know that this woman's dogs have been aggressive in many situations and that she lives in denial that she has potentially dangerous dogs.

I continued to teach and she continued to shop. There was no drama and I sighed with relief. The class ended, I passed out homework and went to help a student pick out a harness for her poodle.

Then I heard what made me cringe. A set of deep growls and yelling. Shit. I ran across the huge store to the counter and by the time I got there it was over.

One of my students (with a wonderful aussie puppy) was paying for her treats, when Dummy's boyfriend brought one of the pit bulls up to the puppy where it tried to pin the puppy up against the counter snarling then Dummy herself DROPPED the leash of the second pit and it ran up to puppy to get into the mix while my student used her leg to block both dogs from her pup yelling for them to get their dogs. Dummy just STOOD there and didn't even try to recover her dog....aarrgghh! The staff where all circling and the situation was quickly diffused and the Dummy couple left.

The aussie puppy was fine ( luckily, he lives with terriers and can blow stuff off easily). Its people like this who give bully breeds a bad name. Whats scary is that she is clueless (or maybe just doesn't care) at her lack of dog skills. Its only a matter of time before her dogs do serious damage.

2 comments:

Angel Logan said...

You just described one of my worst nightmares with a service dog. And this woman goes to dog events?!

teri said...

Yes! She lacks the ability to read canine body language and no matter how much she is told (by others) she continues to set her dogs up to fail. It floors me that she cant even bring her dogs to a store without causing a problem. This was my first (and probably my last) time teaching in this store now that I know she shops there.