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September’s been quite mild this year and we’ve had lots of sunny days so I won’t complain about the bit of rain we’ve had today, especially since Bubba and I managed to stay dry. For once, our timing was right. Jack likes to walk around 11:00 because that’s when the school up the street lets out for lunch and the teenagers flock to the sidewalk in gaggles to do their visiting and vaping and they all love Jack. They call out his name as we approach and Jack just wades into the crowd where about 20 kids call him to come all at once. Some of them bend down or crouch and Jack will bestow kisses on them. The others he’ll rub against or give them his bum to scratch and most of them happily comply. He weaves his way through the crowd positively vibrating with happiness and spreading joy. It’s a wonderful thing to witness and it makes me a happy voyager.
What a good boy, the only dog I’ve had that would have been safe to do that was Jazz, but few people greet German Shepherds with such enthusiasm so most people didn’t get to find out how very affectionate she was.
Jazzlet,
I’ve only ever had labs. Sometimes I think I’d like a dog that would keep people at bay, but labs are so easy to live with. I’m a bit lucky because Jack is dark and at night you can’t see his labness as much as his bulk.
Jack has a fanbase!
My dogs Miles and Jake used to do that. Jake sometimes had to check Miles with a tooth-boop on the nose. 150-lb dogs are normally scary but they had 12-yos run up and smooch them. I only ever saw them decide to be scary once and that was when a bear came ambling into the yard when they were playing with/guarding the neighbors’ kid. They didn’t get very scary -- the bear stopped any everyone looked at everyone and the bear wandered back into the woods.
My elderly neighbour and her family adored Jazz, her tiny grandson would run out into the yard when he visited and call for Jazz, then feed her through the fence. My neighbour was widowed while we lived there and never really got used to cooking for one, she asked us if it was ok to give Jazz the leftovers, would ask us if each different food was ok to give to Jazz the first time then if she had any left over would call Jazz to come get them. This happened so often that the first thing Jazz usually did when she went out was to go to the fence and make a friendly bark to let Josie know she was there, just in case there were any leftovers looking for a home. Our property was a little higher than Josie’s, a couple of feet, if Josie was weeding the flower bed beneath the retaining wall when Jazz went out she would quietly go down the garden, stick her head between the apple cordons, over the wall, right above Josie, and then bark, fortunately Josie thought this was hysterically funny even though it made her jump every time. The little lad would pet Jazz who would get more and more soggy with delight, lean on him more and more until he fell over, then start washing his face while he lay on the ground laughing (we always supervised their play and would have stopped Jazz if he wasn’t entrely comfortable) -- when he’d had enough he would say firmly “stop Jazz!”, and she would.