One of those days...

I had one of 'those days' today and I'm glad the day is almost over. I'm looking forward to a new day tomorrow. Brad brought his son to work today, and Sarah and I haven't seen Tanner in at least three years. Tanner is now 12 years old. Unfortunately there were a couple of incidents with Tanner and one of my three dogs this morning. I wasn't in the room when Brad and Tanner arrived this morning and my protective australian shepard who doesn't especially like Brad had an adverse reaction to Tanner this morning. Brad then made it worse by forcing Tanner into the situation rather than removing the dog. I was upstairs unaware while this first incident was occuring. As I came down the stairs with my aussie by my side, Brad was scowling at me. I greeted Tanner and immediately found out why I was being scowled at. My aussie began barking and became aggressive toward Tanner who was already scared and freaked from the first incident. I quickly grabbed my dog and put her in a room out of the situation and apologized to both father and son. I also tried to soothe Tanner as much as I could. Sarah and I both could see that Tanner was very scared and is apparently fairly scared of dogs to begin with. I found out from Sarah a short time later that Brad didn't help things by forcing Tanner into the house while my aussie was still agitated and loose. And Sarah couldn't step into the situation because she brought Ripley this morning and happened to be holding her during the first incident.

My aussie really is a big baby, but she is very protective around strangers and I think like most dogs she senses fear and reacts strongly to it. It also doesn't help that Brad ordinarly thinks her protective aggressiveness is funny when it's directed toward him and he usually antagonizes her a bit to egg her on. I usually have to tell him to knock it off and to not encourage that behavior. I have two other dogs who are both the most docile, non-aggressive dogs who aren't protective or leery of strangers at all. Tanner managed to play ball with my border collie for awhile, and Sarah and I both thought that he had calmed down. Tanner was still scared though because a short time later in the house as the border collie came around a corner, Tanner freaked and kicked the dog in the head. The dog is so sweet that he just looked around wondering what the heck happened?! My third dog who eventually came downstairs with my younger son, Nickolas, also must have freaked out Tanner. Tanner was scared which at this point was understandable since his dad ignored his upset and instead seemed extremely angry at me. The third dog who licks and is lovey and gentle with Sarah's 17 month old started to look agitated to me. The hair on his back started to stand on end. I saw danger immediately and asked Nickolas to take him out. Then I put the border collie out for his own protection.

In the meantime, Brad ignored Tanner's distress and instead seemed to be spoiling to get into a fight with me. I didn't bite though. My oldest son, Erik, happened to get into what started as a pleasant bantering conversation with Brad which quickly devolved, much to my son's surprise, almost into a verbal fight. As soon as Brad started getting really pissy and nasty, I stepped in to diffuse that one. My 18 yr old son looked very shocked by the strange turn of events to say the least.

The whole morning Brad just seemed to be looking to get into a fight. He wasn't interested in my apology about my dog this morning, and he seemed terribly insensitive to Tanner. I've noticed though that he seems to be in a foul mood lately and is ready to get into shouting matches. He doesn't get anywhere with that with Sarah or me because she and I both tend to avoid any kind of major conflict. She even more than me. Plus when someone tries to provoke me the way he was obviously trying to provoke me, it makes me less likely to get into a fight with him. There was no way I was going to give him the fight that he wanted today!

I'm trying very hard to give him the benefit of the doubt in this case. I think or maybe hope that he was embarrassed or upset with himself with the way he handled the whole dog thing as well as his son's fear of dogs, and it came out in his behavior this morning. However, if he starts in on me tomorrow or even tries to blame me for my dog's behavior, all bets are off. I gave him the benefit of the doubt today. So I'm already mentally preparing myself for some verbal sparring tomorrow. But I will not tolerate him blaming me and my dog on his unskillful actions today. Especially the man who knows full well how leery of strangers and protective she is, and who thinks it's a game to antagonize her. So I'm ready for him tomorrow. I just hope that he will get Tanner into a class to learn to cope with his fear of dogs and how to handle himself. I'm afraid that we witnessed a self-fulfilling prophecy today. I bet Tanner will be glad to be going to Karate tomorrow. He probably thinks it's safer!