Saturday, June 28, 2008

Dogs

I have learned my lesson. I will not hold Jenna down to the dog's level next time we have an opportunity to see a dog up close. I think I'm just overzealous in trying to avoid passing on a dog phobia to Jenna. It's not that I want her to want one or think all dogs are friendly (since, hey, there are some mean doggies out there), I just would like her to not be afraid of them. And it's just too early...and dogs are too unpredictable. She doesn't understand licking and sniffing and she got really scared and started bawling. Yeah, dumb on my part...but I'm not that familiar with dogs either, and I thought this one seemed pretty well-behaved. There was no way I could have predicted that, but next time we'll watch from a distance, or *I* will pet the dog. She's just too little. Man, I really felt badly. My intentions were nothing but good, but it went all wrong. Luckily, she was fine a few minutes later and then when we got back inside the house, I googled "dog", and she proved that she was not overly traumatized (phew!) by getting all excited at the pictures and saying, "dog!" (whereas a minute after the incident, when I said "dog" a couple of times, trying to explain that the dog was just saying hello, she started crying again)

It's a good thing little kids give us parents a second chance when we screw up!

1 comment:

Carolyn said...

I've had similar issues with my kids and dogs. We always had a dog when I was growing up. But out dogs lived outside in Georgia. 3 of my kids have a fear of dogs. Which is so unfortunate! I like animals. And even though Dan doesn't like animals we try really hard to not pass along those negative opinions. But on more than one occasion a "friendly" neighbor dog has come over and licked my kids in the face for playfully knocked them down. And this has scared the pooh out of my little ones! I can only imagine what they must be thinking to have this huge furry creature knock them over and lick them. It must be terrifying. So I'm having to carefully retrain them with good do experiences. Poor kiddos. So yeah, I recommend being very careful introducing animals to Jenna.