Dog trains man

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Finding Mr. Right

I was puzzled. We had just passed a group of road workers, and Tilde had done everything in her power to greet them. She just didn't let me pass by, pulling the leash, wiggling her body with her tail slashing from left to right. The men noticed, and one approached to reach out his arm for Tilde to sniff. Tilde made a slight hesitation, which I thought was odd considering all the trouble she went through to get closer, but then she went in to earn her cuddle.

I remembered the other day my arm almost dislocated from my shoulder when a bicyclist passed us by. Tilde just launched herself as a rocket but she was stopped by the leash. She stood there watching the bicyclist disappear, tail wagging, whining out of disappointment. What was this? We were doing great on the no-hunting-bicyclists front, or was that again one of my dreams Tilde shattered?

When I think of it, Tilde isn't much of a guard dog in the first place. When the garbage collectors do their rounds, Tilde is standing in front of the window, making high-pitch barks. Not a fierce Hovawart alarm bark at all. It is more your average OMG-I-must-go-and-meet-them-otherwise-I-die type of bark. So we went out to meet them. Again she made that same hesitation I had seen with the road workers, but overcame it quickly to shower them in her affection.

I know Tilde is very fond of humans. Actually that fond, she lost any typical guard dog Hovawart reservations, if she even ever possessed those. She outright loves people. All people. But lately she was getting extremely happy for people. It puzzled me.

My answer came when our son paid us a visit right after work. He was standing there in his working clothes in the door opening, with Tilde already all over him, whining and crying about how much she had missed him. Now I remembered. His company switched to a new yellow-fluorescent color for their working clothes a while ago. It was red before.

The road-workers, the garbage men, the bicyclist, they were all wearing that same yellow-fluorescent type of clothing. Tilde was mistaking them for our son, explaining as well the short hesitation she made when she came close enough and discovered the person wasn't him.

Tilde didn't care about her mistakes. She jumped, kissed, and cuddled with our son like there was no tomorrow. Finally she had found her Mr. Right.
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