We've been stopped by a woman on our walk who immediately whipped out her camera. She wanted one photo of Dean, and then another photo with him. She said specifically "My face has to be in it." and then proceeded to take an awfully angled MySpace-esq photo. I almost died a little because a) I'm a part time photographer at work and b) you should never put your save that close to a dog without asking the owner. I told her that immediately and she said she wouldn't have minded getting bit because "He's just too cute." Needless to say that will never happen again, even though Dean was a perfect little gentleman. I'm setting him up for success, and that most definitely wasn't part of the plan.
On Saturday we decided to go to the local pet store and pick up some stuff. My mother, Dean and I all walked together since its not too far from our home. Perks of living in a big city I suppose. So, we stopped at the Wawa down the street for coffees first and took turns standing outside the store with the dog. He was excellent, sat and laid calmly for me, and stood waiting with mom while I was inside. He's my velcro dog alright. When I came outside there was a man questioning my mother about him, and I was happy to see she really pays attention when I go on my dog ramblings, she answered all the questions she was able to. Proud of her and my boy! When we resumed walking we were stopped another few blocks down by a group of men holding some kind of flea market and passing out information on a local church.
The local church men were very nice, complimenting Dean and myself, but one other man was quite overbearing. He claimed to have Shepherds his entire life before moving to a small breed, and immediately started lecturing me on how to train my dog. I wasn't very happy, but I merely smiled and agreed for the sake of being able to go on our way as soon as possible. Well, that plan backfired and we were stuck there for 20-30 mins. He even fished out his wallet and showed us a photo of his last Shepherd who he claimed to be 130 lbs and looked like a wolf. Well, the dog had Shepherd ears, but that was it really. Not wanting to be rude, I complimented his dog, because it really was a beautiful creature, just definitely not PB as he insisted.
To round out all of our short stories, Sunday night we had a little more surprising run in while walking home from my aunt's house. Up the street from my house I had Dean in a sit to get ready to cross the street. Now he was being a little finicky and wanting to go go go even though there were a few cars driving by that I wanted to wait for. As the last car goes and we're ready to cross, a man comes out of the bar behind us and starts asking all kinds of enthusiastic questions. He also went on to say how a German Shepherd changed his life when he was in a boys home at a young age. This was probably my favorite interaction all week, just a few minutes kneeling and petting Dean, who was fantastically behaved I might add, and chatting about the pure devotion, intelligence, and love that comes from these dogs. We were quickly on our way then and Dean was happy to be home, and we turned in for the night soon after that.
What an exciting week!
