Who's in charge in your home?
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Obedience traning from an early age is vital to maintaining some form of control over a pet
SOME READERS have commented on the column I wrote last week, when I described how a little girl near my soi hit Wan-Wan, my tiny poodle, when we were on a walk.
I didn’t say anything to the child, hoping that her mother, who was standing nearby, would speak to her.
“Why didn’t you talk to the child?” the majority of readers have asked. “Surely, she needs to be taught how to behave.”
I learned a long time ago that you never reprimand someone else’s child, not even when there’s an opportunity to teach the child how to behave with kindness and understanding.
The kid’s mother may or may not understand, and being protective, would not appreciate what she might consider the interference of a complete stranger.
I can’t even reason with Khun J, my next-door neighbour. Mee, her part-chow, has become increasingly aggressive as she’s grown older. Just recently, she attacked an elderly beagle who was on a walk with his owner when she jumped on him.
The beagle is larger than my dog Wan but perhaps a third of Mee’s size. The boy’s bites and scratches have started to heal, but with some setbacks. The wounds seemed to have healed completely, but then abscesses formed underneath. That type of infection requires daily treatment by a vet and takes weeks to heal.
J herself lays the blame for the incident entirely on the owners. “When they saw Mee, they should have picked their dog up,” she says.
Last year, when Mee attacked Wan, I couldn’t grab her right away since she kept on backing up, trying to get away from Mee. When the beagle saw Mee coming, he must have been terrified and reacted the same way.
Besides, I think the owners probably hesitated. First, they couldn’t believe that J wouldn’t try to control her dog. In addition, the beagle isn’t exactly easy to pick up, being somewhat stiff and arthritic. It would have been difficult to grab him in time.
Still worse, the owners told me later, they were terrified of Mee. If they had intervened, would she have attacked them too?
Mee, of course, needs to be controlled, but her owner isn’t listening. She considers it everyone else’s responsibility to protect themselves from her dog. She told me so just the other day.
My guess is that she’s blaming everyone else because she doesn’t know how to control her own dog. She’s simply not strong enough.
Not even in her own home is she in charge. If Mee doesn’t want to go for a walk, J can’t force her to. I’ve seen Mee snarl at her when J brings out the leash and orders her to the gate.
I wonder just how much control that mother has over her daughter. When the kid hit my dog, would she have listened to her mother?
In my own home, I’d like to think I can control all my animals, but in fact, even with the cats, I’m not in total control. I do have the advantage of size and strength, but if a cat doesn’t want to do what I want her to do, she’ll win.
Even the dog, the most obedient of the zoo, doesn’t obey me in all things. She’ll come to me when I command her, as long as she’s sure she’ll enjoy the experience. “Treat”, “walk” and “let’s go out” always attract her attention.
“Time for bed” is slightly less successful. Before she comes to me so that I can carry her upstairs to the bedroom, she always hesitates. She wants to go up, but first she looks towards the cats. If they’re not moving upstairs, she waits.
In my house, the cats tell the dog what to do.
