Now we're all in the doghouse

Don't you hate defensive parents? The only thing worse might be defensive dog owners.

They refuse to believe that their little pooch could do anything wrong. And even if they have proof, they still think it wasn't poor Frisky's fault. It must have been that mean old poodle or--even more likely--the mean old poodle's mean owner!

You see these over-protective masters of canines walking down the street with Samson trotting regally beside his proud owner or driving in the car with Flopsy perched firmly on her owner's lap and coming dangerously close to driving the car herself. You roll your eyes, move to the other side of the street and mutter under your breath how ridiculous they look. You think these types of owners should have to pass some kind of sanity test before they are allowed to take home a dog.

And then you become one.

Even if you don't think you're a defensive, over-protective dog owner, there comes a time when your dog's behavior or intelligence is questioned, and, suddenly, Rover is as precious to you as the three children you gave birth to.

Before I confess to my personal experience on this subject, let me just say that Sidney, our beloved border collie/lab is the sweetest dog that has ever lived! She wouldn't hurt a fly. Really! All she wants to do is be near people and other dogs. The worst thing she could do to someone is lick his face raw.

But she's a great protector dog, too! The mail carrier, the lawn crew next door, even the elderly nuns who venture outside the convent across the street from our house rouse her "I'm-in-charge" instincts. You can't be too careful of anyone, she seems to say with each ear-piercing bark she belches out of her delicate little mouth--not the same mailman who's been coming to the house six days a week for the last six years or the nun across the street who looks so sweet you want to dash across traffic and invite her over for coffee cake. As annoying as her barks can be, they also let me know that someone is approaching, and they let approachers know that a very capable dog is watching their every step.

There are times, however, when Sidney takes her enthusiastic (some prefer to call it frantic) personality a little too far. Lately, this has included four times when she decided to see for herself if the dog walking down our street was interested in a playful romp or a competitive tussle.

She means no harm, of course. Everyone knows that, right?

Well, not the lady who was innocently walking her dog past our house--with her young daughter and two other dogs in tow.

It was my kids who heard the commotion outside and yelled for me to come upstairs. "Is she in the front yard?" I asked breathlessly. (Not because I'm out of shape, mind you, but because I was in such a hurry to make sure everything was okay.)

"Yes!" the three of them shouted in unison. "She ran after another dog!"

And then I heard the woman telling my dog to go away, a sentiment that I began to echo very loudly, and to which Sidney responded very, very slowly. She had no sense that she had done anything wrong, and, it seemed, she was rather enjoying being at the end of the driveway where she could really see what was going on.

The dog owner was not happy, to say the least. "She came after my 13-year-old dog," she shouted my way, pointing to the shaggy black canine calmly standing beside her. "He's thir-TEEN!"

"Our dog's E-lev-EN!" I called from the front door as I motioned for Sidney to hurry inside. I wasn't trying to be sarcastic; I simply was trying to point out that my dog was old, too, so maybe they were just exchanging some playful old-timer communication.

The woman shook her head. "I don't care," she said. "She doesn't just come over to play. She CHOMPS. She CHOMPS!" Just in case I didn't understand what she meant by "CHOMP," she raised her left had and opened and shut her fingers vigorously over and over.

My first reaction was to become a protective pet owner. "My dog does not CHOMP!" I wanted to shout. "She may playfully nip, but it's hardly anything close to a harmful CHOMP."

But was that true? I'd never seen Sidney CHOMP at a dog, but what if this time she had? What if she was becoming a cranky geriatric dog who didn't want any other dogs on or near her property? What if she wanted to prove that she still had some spunk in her, so she decided to take on an even older dog?

And then the lady dealt me a real blow. "This is the second time it's happened," she said. I'm afraid to let my daughter walk our dogs by herself!"

My stomach kind of folded in half, and my shoulders slumped. The SECOND time she'd done it? You mean she'd gone after the poor 13-year-old dog before, perhaps CHOMPING at his delicate skin?

I looked at Sidney wearing her goofy, head-tilted, "I don't understand human so I don't know what you're talking about" expression. "Are you capable of chasing after other dogs and CHOMPING?" I asked as I dragged her by her blue collar into the house. Again, a vacant look from the dog. If she was capable of such a thing, it didn't seem she had any recollection of it five minutes later.

Once Sidney was securely inside, I ran out the front door and started down the walkway in my stocking feet. "I'm sorry!" I started to call in the direction of where the woman and her daughter were standing just a moment earlier. "I'm sorry!" But they were nowhere in sight. I headed down the sidewalk in the hopes of spotting them, although I wasn't sure why I was chasing after them. I had to say something, I told myself, but then my kids started yelling from the front door that I looked like a goofball running down the street in my white tube socks, so I turned around and headed back up the walkway.

I thought about that mom all through dinner. She probably was still fuming as she sat at her own dinner table, recounting for her husband the unfortunate events of the afternoon. "Those people never have their dog chained up," I could hear her saying. "And the owner didn't even apologize. And when I said our dog was 13, she said her dog was 11, as if that made any difference!"

If she was saying those things that evening, she certainly had a right. My precious, harmless pooch should have been supervised in the backyard so that she didn't charge after strangers going for an innocent walk. Sidney's owner, which would be me, should have immediately run down the walkway to chastise and grab her dog, and then should have stood face-to-face with the stranger and apologized--profusely. And I should have admitted to myself that Sidney, no matter how precious she might be to me, is capable of running after dogs and maybe, just maybe, even CHOMPING at them.

So now we keep a closer eye on Sid, and I keep a better check on my role as a pet owner. It's okay to be protective of your pooch and even spoil her now and then. But it's not okay to take the defensive approach and insist your furry friend is always cute and innocent, even when she's charging down the driveway to play with or--heaven forbid--CHOMP at another dog.