Kenzo's Trash Talking

Trash Talking? Moi?

We ended up scouting the new area we stranded in, Kenzo and me. The car had to get fixed. Again. Thankfully Kenzo was with me, and a walk beats the repair shop's waiting room and bad coffee any day. It was mostly a business park area so I didn't expect to experience any thrilling sights. When you have seen one, you have seen them all. But for Kenzo, a sniff is a sniff. It's good everywhere.

Passing a fenced-in area, I got a shock when a dog on the other side of the fence suddenly started barking. They always do that right at the moment you least expect it and when you go around in your own thoughts. Kenzo pretended he didn't noticed the disturbance, continued with his sniffing like nothing happened and only changed his stance to a little more low and calm, while keeping an eye on the other dog only from the corner of his eyes.

Excellent, I thought. That was an awesome display of calming dog body language, and gave Kenzo a treat for that. It seemed to have a soothing effect on the "guard" dog, so I threw a treat over to him as well - old habits die hard. He followed us all the way down to the end of the fence. And it was a long fence. He was still barking, but the alarm sound in it was missing. Kenzo remained stoic.

On the way back I thought it was better to pass on the other side of the street to avoid all the commotion. No reason to tease the dog after all. This side of the street had a long line of two-feet high boulders along the pavement, and it gave Kenzo plenty of opportunity to do some additional sniffing. Still, the routine repeated itself. When we reached the end of the fence, the dog stopped barking and now he was up for one very rude answer.

Like in slow-motion, Kenzo seemed to use every muscle in his body to make himself as tall as possible. His tail went high up into the air, and he took one step to the closest boulder, lifted his leg facing the dog, looked straight at him with his mouth closed, and released some water. The dog answered with a tail wag.

I just witnessed Kenzo "giving the Finger" in dog language, and I started laughing out loud, while Kenzo already was parading further down the road, celebrating his "victory". Studying all that dog body language is getting more and more fun, now I have opened my eyes for it.