Most Singaporeans that I know growing up have no dogs. (Disclaimer: I actually don’t know that many people being somewhat of an introvert. Haha. ) But friends I know generally don’t mind approaching a stray cat and giving it a pet or two. One just encounters more stray cats in the neighbourhood everyday and well, in my case, zero stray dogs! The only pet dog that I remember from when I was young until now was this pet dog that always bark loudly from behind the door when we needed to cross by his flat to get to where my father’s mother was staying. And yes, that wasn’t very pleasant.
Growing up in a culture where a lot of parents won’t tolerate the mess made by an animal bigger than a fish, terrapin or hamster, it is understandable that there will be people who have no experience with dogs and are cautious or downright fearful when confronted with one. Just today, Donna and I were waiting for the lift to go home after our morning walk. The lift came up from the basement and there was already a young lady inside. As usual, I asked the person who was already in the lift, “Do you mind the dog?” Sometimes the lady inside with or without a baby did mind and so Donna and I will just wait for the next lift to come along. We were lucky this morning, the young lady went, “No, as long as he doesn’t bite me.” (See the cautiousness? But it is prudent to always be cautious with a strange dog.) We always make Donna sit so that she doesn’t approach the other people in the lift, but she does like to stare at them with her mouth hanging opened and then you will see Donna’s neck stretching out, nose in the air, sniffing, sniffing =.= Oh yes, she knows she has to sit, but the game rules didn’t say anything about pointing your nose as close to the stranger as possible while sitting, did it?
An aunt remarked before, if I didn’t know her, she can look quite scary. One can’t blame her when you compare Donna to this:
Not as big, fierce or scary, but tell that to the random passenger in the lift who takes one look at Donna and screams with a start, “No, I’m scared of dogs!”
And of course, people did and do use these dogs as guard dogs. On watsapp, a friend who saw her picture went, “hey, she looks just like our gaurd dog!” and promptly sent us a picture of her german shepard-mix rescue that her parents adopted.
So what do you do if you would like to have guests in your house and they are afraid of dogs?
Well, the Dog Whisperer refrain “No touch, no talk, no eye contact” works for me. Only I localise it to, “Aiyah just pretend she is a ghost and you can’t see her.”
To date, of all the house visitors I have, no one has done “no touch, no talk, no eye contact” as well as my mom. When she first heard I got a dog, she went, “I’m not going to visit you anymore. I’m scared of dogs. I don’t want her to lick me. ” Yes, her fear is kind of strange when you compare to the lady in the lift’s fear of being bitten.
And of course, my mom says one thing, but she really couldn’t resist coming. And when I said, “Aiyah just pretend she is a ghost and you can’t see her.” She went, “Cheh, you think I want to look at her?” And she didn’t, throughout the visit, Donna laid quietly in our proximity, mostly dozing off. And unlike to our other visitors, not once did Donna jump on my mom, or poke her nose into her personal space. And by the end of the visit, my mom happily went “bye, bye” to the dog.
Not a few days passed before my mom bought chicken claws purportedly for the soup, but I don’t think it was her usual practice to buy any part of chicken for lotus root soup actually. “Give the extra claws to her,” she went airily. And before long, both my mother and mother-in-law were dispensing dog advice as if they have lived with a dog all their lives.
Unfortunately for Donna, she never got those claws since our vet advised us not to give bones smaller than her head to her. She would recommend bigger bones like the knuckle but she did also tell us that bones can cause constipation. So, no bones, especially not cooked bones that can splinter and potentially puncture her internally.
So yes, once people spend some time, even that few minutes in the lift, they start to see that there’s nothing to fear with our not so little dog. A mother with a child even exclaimed, “wow, she is so well-trained” in the lift.
But you know what, sometimes my dog does scare me a little. But that happens at night when she gets fixated on some point behind my head like there is something there that I can’t see. :P
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