bottom of the pecking order

Visiting Fi's family in Carlisle is always a bit of a jolly weekend away. Garantueed to involve joyous dinners, merry chitter-chat banter, naughty cheeses and lots of drunken sing-a-longs. Ever since I've met them, I've been made to feel part of the family. It was as smooth a transition as it can possibly get.

But then there's the dog. Jodi. (A deceitfully innocent name if you ask me) She's clearly an alpha-bitch forced by social circumstance to obey Fi's mum. Which means she puts on the feistiest struggle she possibly can to ascertain she does not descend the ranks. Over the years she seems to have built up this "on-a-par" stand-off with Fi. The two of them fight, growl and bark like equals. And for years there's been some form of equilibrium in the small pack.

Then in comes me. Now, I'm not even remotely tuned into dog-speak, so when I see a dog, I take my time to figure out whether it (a) wants to bite me or (b) wants a cuddle. Not doubt Jodi really just wants a cuddle, but my hestitant approach seems to have led to me being degraded to the bottom of the established pecking order. I really ought to have made my mark on the dominance battle the minute I walked in the house.


A few months ago, I stayed over at the house without my usual bodyguard (Fi). And when I left the bed to go for a wee, I came back to find... a Jodi in my bed. You have to understand that being the bottom of the pecking order, this was a bit of a problematic situation. I tried my hand at the softly softly approach first. Trying to "play" her out of the bed by making silly runs around it. Big dud. Then I resorted to raising my voice and attempted to come across as threatening as I possibly could. Jodi just stared at me defiantly. As a last resort, I decided to try and PUSH her off the bed. Now, this is a 5 stone, quite toothie canine, so my hand was trembling before first contact. I found out rather quickly this was NOT the way to go.

So there I was, in the middle of the night in my jimmy jammies about to surrender to the fact that I might just have to curl up on Jodi's dogbed. Thank heavens Lynne is a light sleeper and the stand off had awoken her. One quick shout and I was finally able to return to my own warm bed. But it's made me think I really ought to take dogspeak lessons from Fi. Either that, or simply always make sure I bring my own sleeping bag.