Thursday, July 24, 2008

Going to the Dogs






You saw Lucy's picture in the previous post.  She's lovely, right?  She is the calmest, most well behaved dog I have ever met and sweet as local corn in August.  And terrifying to Duncan.  

He had a dog incident last week with Bella, the puggle who recently moved downstairs.  Bella is also adorable and friendly and small, but Bella just moved to a yard she can run around in, and she had been a house bound leash dog until she moved so she LOVES to run in the yard.  Last week, she came running around the corner, and Duncan didn't expect her, and he SHRIEKED and cried and shook.  We thought it was just Bella, but Lucy is 5 times bigger than Bella. Duncan was so afraid of Lucy that we had to carry him around for half the weekend.  He was comfortable when Lucy was in her cage, and when he was upstairs with the gate closed...and by the end of the weekend he pet her many times.  A few times he said "Paul stay here; Lucy go home."  He had fun with Paul, but it was a rough weekend for him.

Which brings us to Tuesday the 22nd.  We were on our way to Poughkeepsie to celebrate Kathy's birthday, and we thought it would be fun to stop at the Trevor Teaching Zoo.  Duncan liked the snakes, and that was the end of his comfort zone.  After that, we had to carry him around the zoo...so his fear of dogs has already generalized to a fear of all animals.  He was interested, and he wanted to look at the animals, but he couldn't believe that he was safe from them.  Consequently, I couldn't get any decent pictures because I was too busy being Duncan's Sherpa.  I did get some nice close ups of the herons, but my heart wasn't in it.

I've been enjoying watching the development of Duncan's language skills and his motor skills...watching him develop a phobia?  Interesting but definitely disturbing.  I hope we won't be in therapy for years.

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