It is now the start of Howling Human season in our town;
they call it Jazz on the Plazz. There
are several purposes of this event. It’s
great for socializing your humans, many of whom bring their security detail with
them, so we get to compare notes. Also,
if you need practice with mastering the art of looking cute to attract humans
who like to take pictures with their talking boxes, this is a perfect venue;
there are lots of them. However, the
most useful part of these events is the opportunity to hone begging skills as
there are a lot of unsuspecting humans who can be duped into giving us bread. Talisker takes the subtle approach, gently tapping
them on the leg with his paw, or nudging them from behind with his nose. Although very effective on humans who don’t
live in our kennel, this doesn’t work very well with ours, so I had to devise a
way to get around this problem. It’s
taken a few years to perfect.
The important part is to try to think like a human and take advantage
of the props given to you. In this instance,
the desire of our humans to socialize with others with as little disruption as
possible is the first part of the equation.
The second part, the props which I initially discovered by accident. There are always large dogs that I don’t know
walking past so I like to yell loudly to get our humans’ attention about the
potential threat. They started to give
me bread every time they noticed a large dog coming, thinking that they were
distracting me. I now rarely need to
yell … the bread is mostly forthcoming as soon as a dog rounds the corner
towards us. Every now and again, I have
to give a low growl to jolt them into action, but for the most part it now
works like a charm.
Tobermory
