He set his Gatling Gun bark to max, raised his hackles, and fired away.
Henry, who had previously seemed unfazed by Uncle Zachary's occasional bouts of twitchiness, let out a frantic, "Yelp!" (or possibly, "Yip!") and high-tailed it back into the house as fast as his little legs would take him.
Fascinating
Zachary has more or less the same response (at least, to my humble human ears) when someone knocks on the door, and Henry never bats an eye. Clearly, Henry heard/saw something different in this reaction, but what?
And was it intentional?
That is, was Zachary knowingly sending a warning to Henry to go somewhere safer, or was Henry deciding on his own that Uncle Zachary was onto something he wanted no part of?
The world will never know.
Moments later, with head held high, ears back, and clearly on full-alert, Henry trotted out to where I was standing and "bravely" stood behind me, peering around my leg with wide eyes as Uncle Zachary continued to lecture the tree tops - the squirrel now long gone.
I guess the squirrel wasn't so stupid after all!
I just stood there, resisting the temptation to laugh at Zachary and coddle the pup. When Henry seemed more settled, I picked him up to let him view things from a higher elevation. His body was relaxed, his expression curious but not frightened, and when I put him down he actually took a few steps toward Zachary before thinking better of it.
Zachary, of course, was still telling off those nasty ol' tree tops.
But this had gone on long enough, so I told Zachary to knock it off, reminded Henry that he was "Henry The Brave", then shooed them both back into the house before our neighbors started heaving heavy objects over the fence.
It was an interesting moment, to be sure, and one that left me with more questions than answers...
... principally, how many hours will I need to spend knocking on the front door before Zachary is properly desensitized prior to Halloween?
I don't want to scare the Trick-or-Treaters too much!
"I just stood there, resisting the temptation to laugh at Zachary and coddle the pup."
ReplyDeleteFor some reason my family has always acts like I am the meanest crazymomlady on the planet every time I say, "don't coddle her, act like she and every thing else is fine!!!" LOL Maizey tends to be such an alarmist that I try hard not to give her a reason to think she should be alarmed. They just think I'm mean. Now with Magnus it's worse cause he is so little, that I must have a heart of ice not to cuddle him out of his woes! Sigh. . . oh well I know I'm right! LOL
Don't you just wish you could read their minds sometimes? It is so interesting all the things they have going on in there! Another great post!
Haha! I think Henry is very brave. First, you hide, then you think about what actually happened and then you go back outside to check it out. Way to go!
ReplyDeleteHa ha ha! I'm wondering how badly Morgan is going to scare the trick or treaters, too! I have a feeling she's going to get at least one of them to wet their pants. I can just picture that whole squirrel scenario unfolding!
ReplyDeleteThat's the nice thing about Golden's. No matter how vicious they might *sound*, it's hard to be truly scared by the sight of a pale dog with flopping ears and a tail going a mile a minute.
ReplyDeleteIf the weathers nice, I might just put up and ex-pen and leave the door open!