I find myself saying 'Sorry' quite a lot...

If you haven’t owned a dog for a while I think that you will find there has been a massive change in attitude during the last twenty years or so.  When I was a kid (that was LAST CENTURY) everybody had a dog.  If you didn’t have a dog people thought you were weird and felt sorry for you.  If you had more than one dog you were well cool.  We took photo’s of our dogs into school and stuck them on our desks.  We talked about all their little ways and when we were very small we attempted to dress them up in dolls clothes and push them around the streets in our dolls prams.  But now you and your dog cannot be sure of a good welcome anywhere.  Up at the school gates children unused to pets screech loudly and flap their arms about (this is like saying to a dog 'Hi - lets get really excited together.  I’ll flap my hands about and make lots of loud high pitched noises and you can jump about and lick me') causing what I have come to think of as a ‘playground altercation’.  Not all kids or parents are like this, but a significant proportion of them are.  These same mums and dads that fear germs, use anti-bacterial wipes on their steering wheels and only buy organic food as a rule seem not to like my dogs.  Since I have had my dogs I have never said 'Sorry' so much in my life.  I can start apologising for something that hasn't even happened just by catching a glimpse on the look of someone's face when they pass me and my dogs in the street. Part of my learning curve at the moment is to try and not say sorry.  Its hard. Sorry, but it is.  Sorry.  See?