Dog Rehab

This summer, Darcy had a somewhat traumatic interaction with a dog named Gus. Darcy met Gus when he ran into a room where she was along. Gus, who outweighs Darcy by probably a couple dozen pounds at least, ran right at her to say hi. She ran and jumped on the couch to get away from him. He jumped up next to her. To say hi. And as I got into the room to intervene, Darcy was climbing off the couch and onto the end table in an attempt to escape Gus. She was truly terrified. I'm not sure I've ever seen her so scared, even though Gus was most definitely not trying to scare her. He just wanted to say hi. Up close. And personal. With a wet tongue and drool.


We were bummed out because she avoided dogs like the plague for quite a while after that incident. It took a lazy old lab to help get her warmed up to dogs again. Recently, it's been clear that the fear is gone, but there is still a bit of hesitation about actually touching dogs.


Our park friends came by today for brunch and brought poor cooped-up Gus to play in our yard. This is a different Gus, considerably smaller and less interested in saying hi unless he's saying it to a ball or frisbee. Darcy was quite fond of Gus and did eventually pet him. Here, though, she was just insisting on getting her picture taken NEAR him:

The picture was taken with an iPhone and emailed to me because, of course, our camera was stolen, so the quality is not the greatest. But you can see our gorgeous sunny day with my proud girl interacting with a dog. It was a great visit and it will be very nice to have Gus and his person living in California, even if they'll still be 8 or 9 hours away.