Poor Bob

My brother and his wife have just had their first child.

They also have two Jack Russell terriers in the family. The older dog has a reputation in our family for being a handful at the best of times. At the worst of times he's a damn pain in the ... backyard.

This is the dog that ate the crackers off the table at Christmas. The dog that throws his body against the French doors outside the spare room when he knows you are in there trying to sleep. The dog who gets up behind you on the sofa and eats your hair. The dog who looks you square in the eye when you tell him to go outside and he carefully puts his body behind you and the doorway, and won't budge. The dog who won't go outside until you throw grapes out into the backyard for him to chase. He's ... full on.

And he didn't get what was going on when the baby arrived. He was jumping up, trying to play ... just generally going nuts. Now we've all heard of this before, that thing where dogs don't like new babies ... so my brother and sister-in-law weren't surprised to find they had a bit of a problem on their hands.

So they did what modern folk do these days - they brought in the dog psychologist. He calls himself the Dog Whisperer or something like that. They had an intense five hour session with the whole lot of them, my brother and sister-in-law included, trying to set the dog some new guidelines. This doesn't mean just training the dog .. it means retraining the people as well. I bet the dog psychiatrist doesn't exactly say that, but that's what he's thinking!

It all has something to do with the dog thinking he's the leader of the pack and not accepting authority.

And the "treatment"? Well it includes nobody being allowed to look the dog in the eye or use his real name. The family's going around calling the dog Bob. And apparently it's working. "Bob" has been a model family member and no longer spends his days running around the house like a lunatic.

Sounds to me like the dog whisperer should be expanding his range. I might start calling a few people at work Bob. You never know ...