My Baby Watch-Dog

by Cynthia
(Canada)

Ok, I admit - I'm scared of dogs. Since I'm the only one in my family having this fear I still have to endure close encounters with them way too often in my view. However, last year I had unexpected and (unintentional) help from our baby daugther.

When she was a baby, our daughter absolutely loved dogs - and all other animlas too. She learned early what a dog and a cat is and how to bark and miaow.

Whenever we met a cat or dog outside she got totally excited, almost throwing herself out of the stroller to get close to the animal.

The funny thing was that the older she got, the louder her voice became and after a while this had the completely opposite effects on the dogs compared to what she wanted.

At around 10 months she barked and waved so furiously that even the bravest (and meanest in my imagination) mongrels got frightened and took a step back. And the more the dogs backed off, the more intense our daughter became in trying to reach them.

Perfect for a mom scared of dogs!

I still laugh at the memory of my wonderful, wild little daughter barking like there was no tomorrow and scaring even the largest dogs away.