Dog Stories: The Problem Corner (and its potential repercussions)

It starts with two chihuahuas who alert the pit bull mix that there's an intruder coming into their corner. Because of their size, the chis are essentially harmless. But their over-the-top reaction sets up their bigger unneutered male buddy for aggressive behavior. He feels like he needs to come charging from wherever he's at to help defend the territory. The maddening thing about this is that the bigger dog would probably be more friendly than aggressive if it weren't for the chis he was raised with. He's also young enough to correct this behavior but there's no one around to do that. Once I was coming down the street and a young woman was out putting balls through a basketball hoop. When she saw us coming, she left and apparently went inside. I was hoping she was taking at last the chis with her, but no. Maybe they want their dogs to be killed. Rufus is not inclined to kill anyone but she could know that.

So we have one potentially good dog being made dangerous by the action of the chihuahuas and by not being neutered. And then there's the issue of what I have to do to keep these dogs away from Rufus. I generally just keep walking. I point at them and say "uh-uh" or "bad dog" or "don't mess with me." They do listen to this but I am essentially communicating to Rufus that we need to keep dogs away from him and I don't think my aggressive postures or my tone of voice is lost on him either. So there's some chance that Rufus will be made into an anti-social dog when I wouldn't have considered him to be that when I got him.

As I mentioned in another post, I've called animal control but the officer is sick at the moment. I don't feel like I'm in any immediate danger. At one point I stopped to talk to a woman at the edge of their territory. They had followed but were much less hyper or aggressive once out of their protection zone. The bigger dog just stood a little distance away with the woman. She says he is in love with an old chi that she has taken care of since its owner died and the family didn't want it. Rufus was pointed toward our usual continued route, which was behind me. The more sociable of the chis was sniffing around him. I heard a Brr and turned around to shoo the chi away, finding it hard to believe he was giving a warning growl. The chi gave him some space but when I turned to finish my conversation with the woman, it got in front of Rufus again and again he did a Brr.

They're like minor earthquake tremors, practically gone before you realize it's happened. So again I shooed the chi away. I'm not sure what it was doing that made him give the growl. The chi seemed perfectly calm, just inspecting when I could see him. But this is exactly what I'm worried about, that Rufus is going to interpret my actions while we're walking through their territory as some ultimate rule about another dog's distance from him or me when he's on a leash. I'd been hoping that this stop and chat with the woman would provide the dogs to get to know each other on less contentious ground.

I hesitate to correct Rufus for growling because it is a form of communication, a way of saying there's something uncomfortable going on that I need to check out. But I don't understand why he wasn't inspecting the chi in turn. When I first met Rufus, he was with two Rotties, one a puppy. He loved to play with them. If there was any tension, it was the girls telling him to back off. With my dogs, Ginger isn't interested in playing with him. Zippy has shown some interest in doing so but I don't think he can figure out how to play with something so much smaller than him.

There was a cute scene one day when Zippy went up to him and went belly up and wiggled between his front legs. It was clearly an invitation to play (and shows how comfortable she is with him). He gently sniffed her, then settled on one of her front legs and pinched her. I know this because I know he's a pincher, which he almost never does now due to disapproval) and because of her reaction, which was to suddenly lay upright in front of him sphinx-like with an insulted look on her face that shouted "How Rude!" in both dog and people language. He bowed his head over to the right as an act of contrition. Zippy got up and left.

 Zippy and Ginger are now back to their late evening tussles, which again shows how comfortable they are with Rufus. The first time, he charged into the living room when he heard them at it. When he found nothing amiss, he came back into the office, only to repeat his concerned charge a minute later. After those two inspections of the activity, he's only watched from beneath my office table.

So I feel a little sorry for this oversized puppy. He's got no one to play with and he may be misinterpreting my behavior with loose dogs on our walks to mean that he's not to interact with dogs. PetSmart isn't far from my house. Maybe it's time to walk up there (or practice car riding) and sit on the bench outside the store.