Tonight, Miss D and I took our first planned walk with Nettie, the Scottish terrier, and her mom. As usual the initial meet and greet left me nervous. There’s always a lot of barking and excitement, that’s to be expected. But then there’s a bit of a tussle, with Miss D going for Nettie’s ear and Nettie baring her teeth to Miss D, then the humans separating the two and trying to work toward calm.
At that moment, another couple of neighbors and their adorable Shih tzu walk by and stir our dogs up again, so there’s more separating, sitting, and calming. Then let the walk begin!
After that initial tussle, it was more like two four-footed friends checking their mail. There was the occasional butt-sniff, but there wasn’t any more bared teeth or snarls. Miss D didn’t even try to dominate by marking the same spot after Nettie marked. At one point, Miss D started to run forward and just as I was about to pull her back, she stopped. She just wanted to catch up and walk next to Nettie.
So… there’s hope. It helps that we were at the end of our walk and Miss D was already pretty tired. I guess we’ll keep doing this for awhile and then maybe go for longer walks with Nettie and go from there.
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