The Little White Dog
This is an animal that is always a source of educational experiences, or at least amusing ones. My dog is now afraid of the kitchen. Or perhaps more accurately, he is now afraid of the kitchen floor.
I’m not exactly certain when this began, because the little white dog has certain communication problems. When he becomes excited, and ‘Needs to go outside’ – this is usually immediately before he’s taken for a walk during the apparently bladder agitating process of putting on his leash – he will run to the back door and bump it with his nose. If that doesn’t work, he’ll then bark whilst bumping the door with his nose. And if that doesn’t work, he then unveils his ultimate pleading technique. He will sit down facing the door, and hold up his right paw, as if begging for a snack.
He’s not always this easy to interpret. Sometimes he’ll just stand in the middle of the living room, and bark at anyone who’ll listen. This may mean that he wants to go out in the back yard, or that he wants fresh water, or that he doesn’t particularly like the crying baby on the TV. I have already described how he will charge despised animals, and the governor of California, when he sees them on TV. However, he won’t charge crying babies. He’ll just stand in the middle of the living room, and complain about them.
Lately he’s become afraid of the kitchen. At first I thought that this had to do with his fear of heights. He’s terrified around steps, and even just one step is a very intimidating thing. When walking in the neighborhood he prefers to seek out driveways as a means of scaling the curb. He will, if those accompanying him insist, leap up the curb, but it really is quite a production. He’ll hesitate, and hop from one side to the other, and then hurl himself at the curb with enormous force. I don’t really understand the challenge presented by concrete curbs, because he has no trouble hopping up onto the couch, and that is two or three times as high as the curb. He’s always quite proud of himself after scaling the curb. It used to be that I’d need to lift him up over the curb, but now, with a certain amount of preparation, he can surmount the obstacle unaided.
Anyway, a few weeks ago I noticed that he was now afraid of the kitchen. So I began watching how he approached the kitchen, and what spots he tried to avoid. At first it seemed as if he was mistaking a shadow across the doorway for some sort of terrifying crevice. So for a while I tried turning on some lights, turning off other lights, all in the hopes of removing the intimidating shadow.
Well, this didn’t appear to help any, and one day when we returned from our walk he suddenly realized that we’d come into the house through the door leading from the garage into the kitchen. This meant that he was standing in the middle of the kitchen. He immediately collapsed onto his belly, and trembled with terror. I had to pick him up, carry him into the living room, and set him down on the floor. After which he was just fine. Shortly after this he developed a new communication technique in which he would walk up to the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, bark at the kitchen for a bit from a safe distance, come back and bark at me on the couch, and then go bark at the kitchen some more.
None of this made any sense to me. What was it that he wanted, or was angry at, in the kitchen. One day I tried giving him fresh water in his bowl, which is kept on the kitchen floor next to the refrigerator, but that didn’t seem to lure him into the dread room of food preparation. So I picked him up, carried him into the kitchen, and set him down by his bowl. He seemed pretty nervous, so I patted him, and whilst being patted he took the longest drink of water I’ve ever seen this little dog consume. When the drinking was complete he then cautiously backed away from; his bowl, or the refrigerator, or the kitchen floor. He then fled to the safety of the living room.
So now we have a workable system. He barks at the kitchen. I carry him out to his bowl. He has a long drink. He returns to the living room, where he wipes his wet muzzle all over my carpet in order to dry off his face.
Problem solved. Until he finds something else to be afraid of.