That Time Clara Finally Met a Too-Weird Stranger

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That Time Clara Finally Met a Too-Weird Stranger

A tan dog with black on her face and tail trots on the pavement. Her mouth is open and she looks happy. She is on leash and the leash is attached to a harness.

This is about an incident in October 2021 that I wrote about at the time but never published here.

I’ve been walking Clara every day in my neighborhood now since April [2021]. Now, recall that as a feral puppy she was introduced to the presence of humans other than me very gradually. We met with my trainer frequently at an outdoor mall where we could control distance well. Clara was a tough case. It was a slow process, but she got to where she could walk through crowds of people happily, as long as no one tried to interact with her, and I could either prevent that or move away.

A young tan dog with black on her face sits in front of some tall grass. She has on two-tone blue harness. Her mouth is open and she is panting but looks happy.

At the mall, Clara was exposed to way more varieties of humans than many “normal” dogs see in their lifetimes. She has remained blasé about assistive equipment, hats, sunglasses, things being carried, big families, toddlers, children, kids riding on their dads’ shoulders, big hair, flowing garments, uniforms, people on ladders and roofs, people doing construction work, bicycles and scooters, people moving fast—all that. Which is great.

On our walks in the neighborhood, she has retained that indifference to a very wide range of humans. They predict a treat from me if she wants it, but otherwise can be ignored. Recently we walked by a man who was practicing with his fly fishing rod in his front yard! That was fine.

Social distancing is great, since she is good with strange people, even if they look at her, as close as about eight feet. So I can even stop to chat with someone if I need to.

Today, though, she finally saw someone she didn’t like.

There was a small, old man dressed all in black jogging clothes. He walked unsteadily. He was smack in the middle of the street, and he was obviously (to me) looking at his front yard from different angles. So he was neither “walking with purpose,” a behavior Clara recognizes, or “standing around,” either alone or with a group, which is another familiar behavior. Or jogging, or sitting, or working in his yard. He was stopping and starting (unsteadily) and peering. We were between one and two houses away when Clara saw him. I already was paying close attention to both him and her since it would be hard to get by him at a comfortable distance.

“Grrrrr,” said Clara. This dog who virtually never growls.

I initiated an immediate U-turn and we went a different way. Yes, I likely negatively reinforced the growl. This vanishingly rare response from her was so much better than any escalating behaviors would have been.

I thought it was interesting that this would be the one person in months she would be bothered by, and maybe the only person she has ever growled at as an adult. And at that distance!

It took us a while to find someone whose looks and behavior fell outside Clara’s very wide knowledge of what “normal humans” in the mid-southern U.S. do, but we found him! I wish I could have taken a picture.

A tan dog with black on her face and tail trots on the grass. Her mouth is partly open

She has a black harness and leash.

Back to 2024. I walked with Clara virtually every day from April 2021 until her last evening on earth in late September 2024. She never growled at a human again.

Her walk became the favorite part of her day. None of that would have happened without the excellent training she had as a youngster. But she took that firm foundation and grew into an amazing dog. I’m so proud of her. And I think fondly about the moment when a human finally stepped so far out of bounds. It took a lot to get that response out of her!

What’s the weirdest thing your dog has encountered, whether or not they reacted to it?

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