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As luck would have it, this is rather a prescient question for me right now. At home, we are attempting to coax a neurotic four-year-old out of a dog-bite avoidance technique that works as follows. Upon seeing from a distance any four-legged animal that may or may not be a dog, the four-year-old elucidates an escape response that involves her climbing the torso of the nearest adult and wailing an ear-piercing song of terror that is deeply embarrassing to her zoologist father. Her new-found fear of dogs is understandable, however. Our pet cat (he of “milky-eyed bastard” fame) is now no more after being killed by two huskies that had escaped in the night from their owners. While explaining this news to the four-year-old, the two specific words “DOGS” and “KILLED” seem to have become clogged-up somewhere in the digestive system of her cognition, hence the sudden phobia which we are working hard as a family to resolve.
Tail wagging, I tell her (as she climbs me like a tree upon seeing a hamster-sized bichon frise puppy approaching at our local park) is a good indicator of the friendliness of a dog. Dogs with wagging tails are the friendly ones, I say. Don’t be scared of the wagging ones, I tell her. But … well, you and I know that this dog management advice is a bit of a fudge. Like a picture, a wag paints a million words. But not all of them are love stories.
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