How did she know?

[Marigold]

Our dog Poppy is a Norfolk Terrier, and she has an enemy, an otherwise lovely little Miniature Schnauzer. Whenever they meet as we walk down our road, they very much enjoy furious bursts of terrier invective from the safety of the ends of their respective leads. Today we saw him coming up the road as we were returning from our walk, so I moved Poppy into a driveway to give him room to pass. His owner actually picked him up and carried him past, squirming and barking his head off, and Poppy was doing the same. All quite normal, owners not worried, amused grins from both of us.
15 minutes later, we were sitting in the back garden drinking our coffee and Poppy was apparently asleep in a cool spot under my chair. Our house is set back from the road, and the road itself is totally screened from the back garden by the house and also large shrubs and trees. We must have been sitting at least 100ft back from the road itself. Suddenly Poppy jumped up, growling, and raced round to the back gate, barking. The road is invisible from the back gate if you are only 10 inches tall, so she couldn't have seen if anyone was passing by. I went out the front to see what was the matter, and the Schnauzer was trotting quietly down the pavement on the other side of the road, with no other dog in sight. It was quite breezy but the wind was blowing from the garden towards the road so Poppy was upwind of the Schnauzer.
How did she know?

 

[Margaid]

I believe dogs have very acute hearing so maybe Poppy recognised the clicking of the claws on the pavement, but maybe she's just psychic!

 

[Tweetypie]

I think Poppy definitely recognised the whiff of the schnauzer. Dogs do have a great sense of smell, take those dogs trained to sniff out drugs, thieves, etc... the queston is, why does Poppy dislike this dog so much and vice versa?

 

[rick]

I think they like to dislike each other sometimes (though there must be something that starts it off.)
When I walk my neighbors dog she gets really exited the closer we get to the house where a collie sleeps on the window box inside the window. The collie jumps up when it sees her coming and stuff in the house goes flying every time.
My whippet lurcher doesn't like Labradors - which is embarrassing when we meet a guide dog. (gah! friendly do gooders! - always want to sniff ya bum!)

 

[Marigold]

Poppy was well socialised as a puppy, and throughout her first year was unfailingly friendly to any dogs we met, on or off lead. Unfortunately, when she was 11 months old, she suffered a sudden and totally unprovoked attack from a Scottish Terrier, who hung on to her neck, biting so hard that I had difficulty in detaching the dog (owner was totally useless.) Poppy was screaming with pain and fear, and so traumatised that she subsequently regards all new dogs with suspicion, although remaining very friendly with all the dogs she already knew. We worked on it, but attacks like this do leave a permanent mark, and the effect was sealed when the same dog had another go at her a few months later. Other owners suffered the same thing, though thank goodness this dog seems to have moved away. So now, when we meet a new dog, she can be happy to race around and get to know it, after which all is well. But as she appears so noisy and fierce with many new dogs, I don't usually let her off the lead unless the owner knows the situation. Its quite unpredictable - sometimes she is very taken by a new dog and immediately wants to play with it, but usually she will sniff in a tentative way and then nervousness overcomes her and she snaps and growls. Although she has never followed through off the lead and actually attacked another dog, I don't feel I can take the risk, and don't want other owners to think she is out of control and potentially dangerous, so we are stuck in a rather negative loop, I'm afraid. After all, if you're only 5.5kilos and 10 inches tall, you have to stick up for yourself! Interestingly, she's usually much better when we're on holiday, meeting totally new dogs in a strange place with no territorial associations.
It's not uncommon for terriers in particular to bark loudly at each other, and I do remember that our previous dog also hated this particular schnauzer, but as we only ever see him when walking up our road and both are on the lead, it's not a big problem. I would like to know what sort of radar she was using yesterday though, to track him totally out of sight and presumably out of sound and smell.

 

[Margaid]

I remember you telling us about the attack on poor little Poppy. It's interesting that Trog didn't like the schnauzer either. Maybe that's doubled the ability to detect the dog while Poppy is in your garden!

 

[Tweetypie]

Poor Poppy. No wonder she is wary. Just takes one nasty incident like this to cause a possible life long worry. I don't know much about a dogs sense of smell, but a stallion can smell a mare a few miles away. ?

 

[bigjim]

Get cesar millan in. Or watch Channel 11 at 5pm weekdays