Isn’t it funny the different roles we end up playing and the habits we end up creating? My dog is indiscriminate in who she loves. She is a humanophile. If it has two legs, hands to pat her, can feed her or walk her, her love knows no boundaries. In fact, one of the latter is enough to buy her undivided loyalty. I seem to be her ultimate object of affection because come rain, shine, light or dark, I attach to the lead to her collar and take her out for her daily dose of what I call “Doggy Facebook.” It involves her checking out the neighbourhood, by sniffing all the “status updates” left on the base of trees by all the other dogs in the neighbourhood. I love walking with her, her funny trot when she is walking fast, the way, she grins into the wind and her ears flow back. But, I like doing it when I am ready. She is always ready. From the moment I get home, she is within five inches of me, no matter where I go. She does her doggy-pant of “Are we going yet?” If I sit down she does too, but if I just move slightly she is up and ready to accompany me wherever I go. She is so conditioned that if I touch my runners, she is even more animated. Tonight, she had finally given up on me because it was already 9pm, she had slouched on the couch next to my husband. I took off unbeknown to her and came back into the room wearing the prized objects of conditioning – the runners. I did not have to say “Do you want to walk?” I did not have to look at her, she levitated off the couch and was next to me before I could say “Walk?”

With all this unconscious conditioning, it does become slightly annoying to live with her constant attention and vigilance. I could try extinction to cancel out her association with my iPod, the runners and the lead, but I would be missing out on her affection and the huge laugh we all have from just how conditioned she is, so we live with her exuberance and her learned responses, and I end up walking and walking, even when I would rather do my beached whale impression 🙂

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