But I Just Want to Sniff Your Butt

Yesterday I was walking Grady through the field near our house (lots of storks--I'm telling you, storks rock) when in the distance I saw a blind woman with a dog running off leash heading in our direction. I tried to pick up the pace so we could get ahead of them and not have an incident, but sure enough Grady had to do a bunch of sniffing and they caught up with this. The dog was a beautiful Swiss Mountain Dog--apparently not a guide dog, just a pet--that came right up behind Grady to try to sniff his butt (as dogs do). Grady didn't take too kindly to this and started to snarl, and I was afraid we were going to have an incident and I wasn't sure the blind woman would be able to jump in if they got into it. But sure enough, without a word from the owner her dog stayed back just far enough that Grady couldn't lunge, but close enough to try to get acquainted. Grady freaked out the whole time but everything was totally under control and the woman just said hello to me without a bit of concern. I tried to explain in my broken German that Grady wasn't so friendly with other dogs, but it didn't seem to bother her--I think she knew her dog was well-behaved enough that it wouldn't become an issue. Sometimes I wish Grady would just lighten up a little and make friends--he's actually not aggressive, but he'll go after another dog if he feels threatened (which is most of the time). He reminds me of a little boy whose idea of flirting is to pull girls' hair--he just doesn't get it.

Incidentally, this is the field--or rather, a fraction of it--near our house. Downtown Basel is in the distance; if you were to draw an imaginary line from the end of the trail, the big building in the distance is where I work. Right now in the field they're growing asparagus, strawberries, and a few other things I haven't figured out yet.