Turn Off!!

Today we went over to our friends, Matt and Jodee Cohen's house.  They have 2 kids, Lincoln (3) and Keeley (9 mos). They made a amazing breakfast of quiche, homemade waffles, different kinds of butter for the waffles, strawberries and whip cream, bacon and other fruit! Yum!!  We had a great time over there and Luke and Lincoln got along so well! There wasn't any screaming or saying "mine." I was really impressed and happy with both of them.   After a while Matt asked if we would be OK if their dog, Daphne came out to play.  Daphne is a little dog, but pretty rambunctious.  We said OK, because we do want Luke to get used to dogs since he's not around them too often. He usually just sees them on our walks and at the park and generally does OK.   So they let Daphne out and she came out in a flurry of activity... Running from one person to the next to say, "hi."  When she got to Luke, he turned his back and got a little scared. I was somewhat surprised by this because in the past he's been OK around dogs.  I tried to show him that it was OK, that the dog was nice.  And for those of you who know me, I am generally a little (ok a lot) scared of dogs. Don't make fun of me... I grew up in Enumclaw where rabid dogs ran loose and loved to eat little girls on bicycles with rainbow flip flops.  I hate that I'm scared of dogs so I wanted to set a good example and went over to Daphne and started petting her and saying, "See, Luke.. Nice dog. She likes you!"  He completely ignored me and my brave attempt to let him know everything is OK and my demonstration that Daphne just wanted to play.

Luke went about his business and started playing with more toys (Lincoln has amazing toys!) and was caught up in the "work" he was doing.  Daphne headed over there to play some more and Luke's back was to her... Once she got over to him she nudged up against him and licked him. That got Luke's attention immeditately.  He hunched up his shoulders and you could tell in his face he was scared and he pointed to Daphne and said, "turn off!"  While on one hand I felt bad for him on the other hand it cracked me up...  He thought (or maybe hoped), Daphne, had batteries in it that you could turn her off when you were "done." 

We said they didn't have to "turn Daphne off," but Matt went ahead and put Daphne in one of their rooms so Luke wouldn't be scared.  Luke will need to work on his fear of dogs - which means I will too (yay?!).  Who knows maybe being afraid of dog is a hereditary condition? :)