Things My Dog Distrusts – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

In the grand tradition of Things My Cat Hates, today I bring you Things My Dog Distrusts. My 3 year old lab Lani only cares about three things: throw the ball, spray with hose, chew on rawhides (swim in lake is a corollary to spray with hose, really just any water of any kind is a-ok). If you look up labrador retriever in the dictionary you see a pic of Lani.

However, as with all animals, she is not without her neuroses. Mainly, she is rather fearful. So here is a list of things my dog is quite afraid of.

Metal Floors.

Lani absolutely, positively, will not walk over a metal grating. Plants feet, stoic, if I try to pull her she pulls back harder. Metal floors are a HARD NO. The Loop near my house has some drainage ditches that pass underneath, so there is a metal grate covering the ditch. This renders the Loop non-navigable for us. If I succeed in getting her over the grate going out, we will not be able to go over it coming back. Trust me.

My favorite metal floor story is when we took a trip to Desert Pet, a local pet store. They have two rooms, one of which is slightly higher than the other, so you know what connects them… a metal ramp. We cannot enter the other room. She was so thrown off by the trauma of almost stepping on a metal floor that when we went to leave the store, she also refused to step on the slightly different colored tile near the door. I finally was able to leave the store by sliding the welcome mat over so she could step on that to get out the door.

Really any surprising or abnormal flooring is a mild trauma. One of our dog friends, the golden retriever Clover, loves to go down the slide on the playscape in the neighborhood (it is absurdly cute and wholesome). Lani cannot get to the slide because there is a lot of weird things to step on to get there. Way too scary.

Surprise Newspapers.

My neighbor, Mike, is lovely retired gentleman who takes care of things for people around the neighborhood, including getting my mail and leaving it on my porch. The other day he left some newspapers on the patio and kept them in place with a rock. When we left to go do our nightly necessary, this was quite a surprise.

Apologies for the darkness of the video, it was nighttime and I was not prepared for how hilarious it was going to be.

Mike.

Oh Mike. So vexing to a confused pupper. He waters my lawn, drops off my mail, and does all manner of things outside the window. The audacity. She often barks at people when she sees them on leash, then is quite calm and happy to see them once they meet. Not Mike. I’ve tried to introduce them, but she knows the man who regularly invades her yard and she is not going to be friendly no matter the circumstance. Poor Mike.

The Neighbor Dogs.

Nothing evokes more blind rage.

The Word “Yep”.

Any Moving Object.

Anything that is not supposed to move, that then moves, is terrifying. Even if she sees me move it, or if she moves it herself. Unacceptable.

Here, the ball ended up behind the DVDs. She can’t get it herself, OBVIOUSLY, because that would make the DVDs move, and that’s too scary. So I have to get it. When I didn’t get the ball, she held vigil at the DVDs, staring, waiting for the ball to come out somehow. This went on for a while until I finally got the ball.

This story repeated yesterday with the ball under the kitchen shelving, and a few days ago with a chew toy under the dining chairs, and many many times going way back.

The Shower.

The “really just any water of any kind is a-ok” I said above was a bit of a lie. My dog wants to be blasted in the face by the water hose, swim to exhaustion in a lake, drink all the water out of my bathtub, but do NOT try to put her in the shower. Getting bathed in the shower, via detachable shower head, is a form of torture. What a strange dog.