Yes, he was growly when I first met him.
Short excerpt from the book Angel From the Streets:
......Then one evening, as we returned home though the fields, I heard a growl behind me and spun round to come face-to-face with a large black dog. Teeth bared, hackles up, he challenged me. Misty, knowing dinner was on the agenda, had already reached the field gate, and hadn't noticed him. Ignoring the black dog, I kept up my pace, but he challenged me again, with the canine equivalent of:
"Get the heck out of my territory."
The dog seemed to be suffering a clash of emotional interests. His front end didn't synchronise with his back end. His vocal threats were in opposition to his waving tail.
Wary, but not afraid, I bent to pick up a stick, showed it to him, then threw it in a wide arc. His snarling instantly stopped, and he stared at me, unable to grasp the audacity of what I’d just done. But he was compelled to turn and find the stick. Still wagging and growling at the same time, he retrieved it to drop it at my feet.
Misty had back-tracked to investigate, already greeting the dog with a whistling-whine down her nose; her usual song of friendly meeting, which always melted the heart of any canine stranger.
The dirty black dog responded with the usual courtesies, reacting to her charm and instantly forgetting all about me.
I noticed he wore no identification collar, so had no idea where he'd come from.
We all played together, but a look of dismay crossed his face every time it occurred to him that he had forgotten to growl. Whenever that happened, he backed up all merriment with a show of teeth. I responded with irresistible laughter. The slanting evening sun caught in his brown eyes making them glow with a reddish light. He looked like a cartoon-sketch 'bad dog', or a nightmare after over-indulgence in cheese.
After a while I said, "Right, you'd better go home now."
To my great surprise, he turned and trotted away up the hill. It was the most surreal dog-encounter.......
Short excerpt from the book Angel From the Streets:
......Then one evening, as we returned home though the fields, I heard a growl behind me and spun round to come face-to-face with a large black dog. Teeth bared, hackles up, he challenged me. Misty, knowing dinner was on the agenda, had already reached the field gate, and hadn't noticed him. Ignoring the black dog, I kept up my pace, but he challenged me again, with the canine equivalent of:
"Get the heck out of my territory."
The dog seemed to be suffering a clash of emotional interests. His front end didn't synchronise with his back end. His vocal threats were in opposition to his waving tail.
Wary, but not afraid, I bent to pick up a stick, showed it to him, then threw it in a wide arc. His snarling instantly stopped, and he stared at me, unable to grasp the audacity of what I’d just done. But he was compelled to turn and find the stick. Still wagging and growling at the same time, he retrieved it to drop it at my feet.
Misty had back-tracked to investigate, already greeting the dog with a whistling-whine down her nose; her usual song of friendly meeting, which always melted the heart of any canine stranger.
The dirty black dog responded with the usual courtesies, reacting to her charm and instantly forgetting all about me.
I noticed he wore no identification collar, so had no idea where he'd come from.
We all played together, but a look of dismay crossed his face every time it occurred to him that he had forgotten to growl. Whenever that happened, he backed up all merriment with a show of teeth. I responded with irresistible laughter. The slanting evening sun caught in his brown eyes making them glow with a reddish light. He looked like a cartoon-sketch 'bad dog', or a nightmare after over-indulgence in cheese.
After a while I said, "Right, you'd better go home now."
To my great surprise, he turned and trotted away up the hill. It was the most surreal dog-encounter.......
