Bailey is a little 2-year-old rat terrier mix, and she has appointed herself Queen of the Neighborhood. You need to get off her lawn already. I know you thought that it was your lawn, but it's actually Bailey's lawn. And your neighbor's house? It's on Bailey's lawn too.
She is at least as reactive as Champ was, but she's so little that it is more hilarious than stressful. If you scoop her up and tuck her under an arm (not an option with Champ), she stops barking. But if you wait for her to calm down on her own, you might be waiting for a while. This afternoon the little dog across the street was outside when we went for a walk, and Bailey danced on her hind legs, spewing threats and pirouetting in rage, until she clocked her head on a street sign. She shook herself off and got right back to her Danse de la Colère. We encountered a pair of 50-pound dogs a couple of blocks later, and she flung herself at them like a Spartan soldier defending the gap at Thermopylae. She might die in the attempt, but by GOD she was going to go down fighting hard for King Leonidas. You should have heard her barking at their backs. The big dogs were like, "Is that a mosquito? What is that annoying noise?" Bailey was saying, "Get back here! I can take you with one paw tied behind my back!!"
I read that terriers tend to be wary of strangers, and that was certainly our experience yesterday. She hates the shelter and was very unhappy to be taken back there, and the whole time she was in the building she was loudly demanding to speak to the manager. "Whose idea was THIS?!" she wanted to know. I walked her over to our car and she was happy to hop in, but not so happy for anyone else to join her. "Lady," she said to me in no uncertain terms, "I don't know what you think you're doing, climbing in my vehicle like that."
But then overnight she decided that we were awesome. She can't contain her enthusiasm in her tail when she sees one of us -- she has to wag her entire hind end.
She is so sweet and affectionate inside our house that we're all pretty fond of her already, but phew, I would not want to deal with that reactivity for very long. I talked to the woman who wants to adopt her, and I tried to be honest without being discouraging. (It was easy to make it sound funny on the phone. It might seem less amusing in two weeks.) The woman was undeterred by my description, so the current plan is for her to be adopted on Saturday. We'll see how it works out, I guess.
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