last weekend was our town's fall street festival. it's a
typical, small town tackyfest, with lots of really bad crafts
and really bad food. it's good for a few laughs, though, so
harriet and i decided to go.

i'm happy to report that Miss Brown, who is not generally
enthused about barbarian hoards of humans, did *very* well.
she got a little concerned when the craptacular live band
started playing, and ended up sitting on my foot and giving me
her best "ears stuck so tight to my head that they're
squeezing her brane" look. she quickly recovered, when a
couple of little kids asked if they could pet her. kids have
s00per s33kr1t magical restorative powers, i guess.

observation: in general, the kids we encountered were
excellent about asking before petting. surprisingly, not a
single adult asked first. hmmm.

except for the sitting-on-my-feet episode, harriet was pretty
accepting of the whole adventure. she schmoozed with lots of
kids, which is one of her favorite activities. she was fine
with almost all the adults who petted her, which was pretty
cool. the only time she got at all tweaky was when a woman
approached her with her arms out and hands waving, in an
exaggerated "meeting a new dog" pose (WTF?!). harriet firmly
believes that anyone who works that hard at proving they
aren't a threat must have something to hide. she backed away
from the woman. duh. what was funny was that there was a man
standing next to me. we'd been chatting about harriet, and
i'd explained to both him and the crazy arm waving woman that
she's sometimes a little nervous about strangers, especially
men. i told the guy that he could pet her, but that he should
let her approach him. and she did. she backed away from the
crazy arm waving woman and hid behind the guy and i. then,
she leaned forward, between us, and bopped his hand with her
head, asking for a pat. haw!

harriet was mistaken for a Pit Bull by two people, neither of
which seemed convinced when i told them she's a Boxer. one
woman insisted that she had to be at least part Pit Bull.
part of me is amused when people argue with me about what kind
of dog i have. the other part of me finds it worrisome,
because it illustrates one of the flaws of most breed specific
legislation.

--
shelly
http://www.cat-sidh.net
http://cat-sidh.blogspot.com/