Daisy is somewhere between eleven and thirteen years old. I'm her third owner, and her backstory is incomplete, though what I was told involves a great deal of sadness. Her first owner was a nice, older man who treated her well and did some training with her before a stroke rendered him unable to care for her and her brother. The second man who cared for Daisy was not kind to her. The details are unimportant, but we know that she was abused and as a result has some lingering social issues.
My snugglemuffin is a great dog. She loves people. She's calm and quiet and affectionate, and exceptionally good at keeping me aware of my surroundings. She doesn't bark unless its necessary, like to get my attention to bring her out. I have only great things to say about my girl.
That is, I only have great things to say about her until she is faced with another dog.
Yesterday, my boyfriend and I walked the babies to the dog-park. It's a nice forty minute walk from our apartment to this long, wide enclosed space where the dogs can run and sniff and pee and wrestle. We don't often bring Daisy because she's pretty cranky. But yesterday, she was so insistent that we bring her, whining and begging to come along with Teddy, that we relented and decided to bring her along.
We were there for a total of three minutes.
Daisy was fine until a much larger, younger dog she doesn't know approached her. It didn't go very well. There was a very loud fight, but thankfully no one was hurt. Obviously, lots of apologies were given and we grabbed both of our dogs and took them home.
Daisy's a reactive dog. She does better some days than others, with some dogs and not others. It's hard to predict how she'll behave until we see it. For instance, before we adopted Teddy, I used to bring Daisy to the park pretty often and she was fine. She's also great with dogs one-on-one, like when Coco The Fab Lab comes for a visit. The difference is her advancing age. She's cranky....like me.
I love my girl.
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