This past Monday, Tippy and I were invited to be on the local news, with my friend Kelly and her dog Kimura, to promote Bark For Life, an American Cancer Society fundraiser that she and I are putting together.
Tippy was excited until she found out she had to take a bath in order to look her best. Since it was for a good cause, she tolerated the dreaded water torture.
We had to be at the studio at 9am. It’s a little over an hour drive, so we got up early on Monday morning and took off. I don’t know if Tippy knew what she was in for, but she was definitely more relaxed than I was on the drive.
Once we got there, we walked around a little bit to burn off some of Tippy’s energy. Fortunately, the rain they were calling for hadn’t started yet.
The doors to the studio are locked, so you have to ring the doorbell and wait to be let in. I’m pretty sure the receptionist was not expecting to see a dog and, from her reaction, or lack thereof, she is NOT a dog person. Tippy couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to pet her and didn’t react positively when she put her paws on her desk. Some people!
We were told to go to the waiting area and she would let them know we were there. Kelly and Kimura came in a couple of minutes later. That’s when things went downhill. Tippy went to greet her. At first, all was good. But then, Kimura gave a little growl and Tippy was NOT going to back down like Kimura’s sister does. I had Tippy walk away, but she started her full blown barking that she does when a perceived intruder is in the area. This is not looking good and we were just hoping that the newsroom had great sound attenuation.
I got her to calm down, but if Kimura moved toward her, she would start barking again. So, we tried “walking together” up and down the hallway. For the most part, that went well, with only a little growling as they passed each other. We went back in to the room and they had a few moments of tolerating each other.
Two young ladies came in to wait for their segment. Kimura hid under the table. Tippy went over to greet them, but, when they reached out to pet her, she gave a low growl and walked away. The ladies were dog people, so that didn’t bother them at all. We all thought it was funny that she went over “to be petted” and then growled when they tried.
She laid down for a few minutes and then got up and laid her head on my lap. I was petting her when Kimura inched her way toward us. Tippy went into full blown protective mode with the really mean bark that she has. Geeze. Really? When I realized that she thought she was needing to protect me, or claiming me as hers, I had her to lie down beside of me. That calmed the situation and they were good until it was our turn to be interviewed.
Kelly and I were very worried that we were going to have a real news story with headlines reading something like, “Dog Fight Breaks Out On The Morning News.”
They calmly walked into the studio. We only had about 30 seconds to get them situated before the interview began. Tippy decided to lay with her back to the camera. With everything that had happened between these two in the waiting room, I decided I wasn’t going to try to get her to turn around. As long as they were calm, we were happy. Here is the link to video of our segment. If you listen all the way to the end, you can hear the news lady talking to Tippy. As soon as the camera was turned off, she had gotten up and turned around to get some lovin’ from her.
There were no more intolerant moments between the two. We are going to try to walk them together some at one of our local trails and see if that helps them get along better.
Apparently, keeping yourself off camera as much as possible is very hard work.
Bark For Life was originally scheduled for tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be awful – raining and a high of 43° F (6.1° C), so we postponed it a week. I’ll be sure to create another blog post afterwards and let you know how she and Kimura gets along.
Tippy Tales 