Little furry friends

We had a white fluffy dog called Great Aunt Tisha.  She was half a maltese terrier and half a Shitz Zu.  She was a very loving dog but she was a bit eccentric.  She had had a troubled youth when she had been mistaken for a baby and had never really recovered from being offered bananas instead of dog food.

We took her in and she settled in quite well.  We already had The Woozle and it was The Woozle who led the way.  Great Aunt Tisha liked to run behind The Woozle and copied everything that she did.  If The Woozle barked, Great Aunt Tisha barked.  If The Woozle lay down in the grass, then Great Aunt Tisha lay down in the grass.

She really was a lovely dog but she had one bad habit.

She was a Bolter.

Do you know what a Bolter  is?

It is someone who likes running away.

And Great Aunt Tisha loved running away.  She didn’t need to follow The Woozle when she was running away.  She could manage it all by herself.

I don’t really think she had any destination in mind as she raced away down the street.  She just liked the sensation of running away.

She really liked it if someone was chasing her.  If the front door was left open Tisha would be off.  Who ever it was who left the door open would rush out after her calling and calling.

Tisha would then stop.  She would look back at the person.  Sometimes she would even sit down and pant at you.  But as soon as the chaser drew close, she would jump up and run away even faster.  It was very frustrating.

I had several ideas about how to deal with this behavior.  Sometimes I would just turn around and walk away from her, hoping that she would get confused about who was chasing who and chase me home instead!  But it didn’t work very well.  She didn’t get confused and kept going in the opposite direction.

Sometimes I would cross the road and pretend that I was just an innocent person walking on the other side of the road.  When she looked over at me I would ignore her, as if I didn’t know her at all.  And then she did get a bit confused.  She wasn’t sure if she knew me or not, or maybe it was that she didn’t know if I knew her or not.  It was a bit like Winnie the Pooh’s tactics when surrounded by the bees.

Once or twice I did manage to catch her and then I had to carry her home. 

No matter how cross I was with her, she always gave me a welcoming lick when I picked her up and she would pretend that we had just met on the street by accident.