Aptly-named dog (France)

Being the slow thinker that I am, it's only just dawned on me during this visit how aptly named Dino is, even though his deceased previous owner (a French farmer) very likely didn't know any English.  The ball of scruff has "din" in his name!  

Dino takes up position immediately outside the kitchen door (at the side of the house) for that’s a most handy spot for being the first to get all the scraps.  

As soon as he hears one of the other dogs (stationed at the front of the house) bark, he leaps straight into barking action, before he even gets a glimpse of what it might be barking at, charging out to the front of the farm house, woofing with all his might but, as Jeanette mimes it to me, he has absolutely no clue what he’s barking about, glancing around him with a baffled look even while he’s barking furiously, wondering what he is supposed to be barking at or about. 

Often, he rushes up to Patou, the old grandee of the dogs and his arch growling enemy, just barking at him instead.  He seems to be joining in purely for the sake of not wanting to be left out.  The term for it now would be FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

On this winter visit, I’ve had a few more opportunities to test out my theory (developed in September last year) about his having been beaten a lot before he came to the farmhouse.  

My other entry Dino the dirty dog mentions his getting up immediately and moving away when you approach him, which smacks (ha! pun!) of his trying to avoid a beating or kicking.  This time, he was a lot more trusting of me, actually allowing me to go all the way up to him, and to pat and stroke his head.  Quite an improvement, indeed, from when I first met him in the summer of 2010.

Once or twice during this winter stay, I’d had to restrain him by the scruff of his neck when I put out a dish of food scraps for the cats and he tried to muscle in.  The high-pitched yelping and whining that he let out sounded like I’d trodden on his feet or whacked him really hard.  (Actually, re-reading this some nine years later, it’s just occurred to me that this high-pitched yelping and whining might’ve been from his mistreatment at the hands of his previous owner.)

To his credit, though, at least he did not try to disobey or bite me.  

There’s hope yet, then, of training this wretched cur to understand that not every hand that reaches out towards him is for inflicting pain.  Maybe at some point, we can get the “o” (zero noise) out of him rather than just the constant “din”.