All right, so the title is a bit misleading, but just bear with me a minute. I get home from a morning of errands, take the puppy out, visit Becky at her work and come back home. Its a beautiful day outside, one rarely seen in Charleston, so in an effort to savor this rare delight, I proceed to open doors and windows. Now our property is maintained by some landscaping company (they do a pretty good job at it, as well); in the grand tradition of landscaping companies (at least those in the Charleston area), ours is staffed predominantly by a Spanish speaking crew.

So, this is where we stand: energy pup, lawn care (mowers, weed-wackers, and a whole mess of noise), and open windows. The quadrupedal inhabitants of my residence remain unphased by the abundance of stimuli, perhaps having grown accustomed to the noise that comes with living in a condo, surrounded by constantly partying college kids. Unphased, that is until one of the aforementioned Spanish speaking lawn care reps begins speaking.

Recap: noise is fine, weather is fine, lack of noise from lawn-care equipment deactivating is fine, Spanish… not so much. The crew stops to chat for a minute and Caoilainnn goes ape-shit! She does not know what these people look like or what they are doing; they did not bother her or appear to pose any sort of threat up until they started talking, at which point, it appears they must be stopped at all costs. The pup growls a lot, I’ll give her that, but the barking, growling, hair standing up, the show of force in its entirety was pretty intense. She certainly meant business. We often improv a dialog for her: “What the eff is going on here!? Who are these people? Can’t you see they are a threat?!”

The reason for the post is that this isn’t the first time she has displayed these tendencies. She certainly did not learn them from us, and she doesn’t ‘hang out’ with other dogs who might have taught her this hatred/intolerance (even at the dog park, she doesn’t socialize with other dogs), which would somewhat rule out ‘nurture.’ On the flip side, and this might support the ‘nature’ angle, she was born in BFE North Carolina. This is by no means a scientific study, merely a series of observations, but I find it interesting non-the-less.