My "guard dog" suffers from a fear of stranger-danger

My "guard dog" suffers from a fear of stranger-danger
5 March 2013

It's true.  My "guard dog" indeed suffers from a fear of stranger-danger.  I can only blame Barney.  The annoying purple dinosaur with his continuous and tedious little moral lessons.  Who by the way, I think happens to be turning mouldy.  He's covered in green spots.

Though technically, we are beyond Barney in our home for obvious reasons - the kids being way too big for it.

So how come my dog is scared of strangers then?  Perhaps he reads the newspapers my husband leaves lying around the house.  Or maybe he's too well informed about the many dangers out there because he watches the news on TV at night.  It could also be that he's picked up the odd snippet from peering over my shoulder while I'm surfing the net.

Either which way, he's not the most effective guard dog around.  He's actually a bit of a wuss and a ninny too.  And though he is in fact a dog and a member of the canine family, he does on occasion act like a scaredy-cat.  And hence there's definite feline in his make-up.  Perhaps on his mother's side if not his dad’s?

Point in reason - we had a new gardener at the house on Saturday and our humungous big dog of indiscriminate breed and parentage, cowered in the house the whole time.  He tried to make himself curl into a ridiculously small ball.  He attempted to squeeze underneath chairs and beds too.  He became a bit of a stalker and clearly suffers from low self-esteem and confidence too.  As well as an unholy fear of anyone foreign to him.  He followed us around the whole day.  Never once was he left on his own.  He whimpered and whined continually.

Shame, perhaps it's his baggage from being a township rescue dog.  Perhaps his father was mean. And maybe being the middle child of eight, his mother didn't have all that much time left to pamper him and pander to his every whim.

Irrespective of the cause, he is highly inefficient as a deterrent to strangers.  More given to hiding from them than actively discouraging their presence.

This strange behaviour could also be due to the fact that he clearly suffers from ADD too.  And maybe that stems from his constant proximity to Cole and the fact that he is actually Cole's dog.  He is extremely clumsy even though he's nearly 20 months old.  He is prone to looking at someone, whilst continuing walking.  Normally into a pillar or a car because he's not concentrating.  But then again, given our experience with Cole, we are quite used to oddities like this.  It barely warrants the batting of an eye.  And speaking of eyes, the problem is not his eye sight either.  He is far too good at running after and catching a ball for that to be a the real problem.

Furthermore, Dax's favourite pastime is jumping on our trampoline.  I KID YOU NOT.  And a certain sense of bravery is certainly required for that feat.  Especially given the fact, that he’s but a mere dog and doesn’t have the benefit of only needing to balance on two limbs and not four.  So the problem is certainly not bravery or lack thereof.  Nor is it eyesight or his ADD.  Stranger-danger is clearly to blame.  The root of this evil.

Maybe I could train one of our other animals to take up the guarding reigns where our dog Dax falls short?  We are currently aiming to make en entry into the Guinness Book of Records.  We are the owners of the-longest-living-hamster-in-human-history (or perhaps it just feels that way).  And surely given Cole's hamster, Popcorn's dedication to life, living and love of the treadmill, I am sure she'll make an awesome guard hamster.  She could pelt potential intruders with her food (if only she had opposable thumbs), or wiggle her whiskers at them in dire warning.

Amber's little lap-doggie would be a useless guard dog too.  She is also still suffering from the trauma of her first few weeks before we got her, infested with fleas.  She's skittish and nervous and shivers quite a lot.

And therefore, seeing as our dogs are both miserable failures in the guarding stakes, and I'm not all that positive that we'll be able to train Popcorn before she falls off her perch, I will pin my last shred of hope on our goldfish.  Just one look at those bulbous poppy-out eyes, would be enough to send any intruder running for the hills.

Now I'm wondering what Dax would do if a stranger approached while he was indulging in a spot of daily exercise on the trampoline.  Would he cower and run for cover? 

Or bravely take his chances and continue to jump?  If nothing else the trampoline would make an awesome launching pad to well…..launch an attack.

 

Dax licking his chops

 

 

Just chilling - he's got his skateboard without wheels on hand, in case he feels like indulging in a spot of wheel-less-skateboard-surfing-jumping-on-the-trampoline.  A little known pastime invented by my kids.

 

 

About to dismount