The Zoo over Ambuscade Street

Erik spent several days last week in an Advanced Baton Instructor Class, so he was showing me some of the moves he learned last night. The dog was getting all worked up about this, prancing around, running from one end of the room, etc - we couldn't figure out what was going on. She seemed to get really anxious at one point when Erik had me pinned, when I had a flash of insight.

I asked Erik to play along, and "threw" him onto the couch, pinning his shoulders. He thrashed around and growled quite theatrically. As soon as we did this, Sara came running over and ducked her head under my arm. Confirmation! She thought we were in a battle for dominance, and she liked the idea of me being in charge. She was just all kinds of happy about it.

Her behavior was so funny that we kept playing it up - Erik thrashing and growling, me pinning him down. At one point I growled back to see what she would do. Bad idea - she took that as her cue to enter the fray, leaping up with teeth bared, growling at Erik. That stopped us pretty quick.

Dogs are amusing. Her sheer delight at my "dominance" was just hysterical - Erik yells at her often enough that she gets nervous around him at times, and she's started ignoring him, seemingly in a blatant attempt to piss him off. Funny stuff - she always listens to me...