Be still, my heart!

I met a really handsome dog. His name is Bruce and he's a nine-month-old akita puppy.

At the other end of the leash is a really handsome young... carpenter.

O.

M.

G.

I must find out if they have an alpha bitch in their pack, or if they could be asked to join our pack. Tinky-Winky hasn't even tried snapping at Bruce yet, even though he's incredibly hyper, so it's promising. I think she's too smart to snap at dogs that can squish her like a bug.

Maybe we should pee on the guy's apartment door to make sure no other bitches can go in there?

Shiba as service dog

I don't think anyone has tried to use a shiba as a service dog. They're just not very helpful. Tinky-Winky's world view is that people serve dogs, not the other way around. You know that saying, that dogs think "this creature pets me, feeds me, takes care of me, he must be God", while cats think "this creature pets me, feeds me, takes care of me, I must be God." Shibas have cat-like thinking.

So the only way to get a shiba to help you is if what you need also happens to serve his or her purposes.

Consider this. Tinky-Winky knows what time it is, and especially what time I'm to take her for her off-leash walk. For a few years we walked off-leash in the evenings, but now that we have the new bylaw guy, who stays up late but doesn't get up early, we off-leash in the morning. In summer, when it's daylight all night and the sun rises at four, it's easy enough to get up at 4:15 to walk the dog. Now that sunrise is after six, I set my alarm for 5:15... and I snooze it. I'm the queen of snoozing. I can snooze my alarm for two hours or more.

That's where Tinky-Winky comes to my aid.

Snoozing interferes with Her Majesty's morning off-leash walk; therefore she has taken to making sure I get up. I hear the alarm and snooze it once, and then I listen, hoping that she's still asleep. If I'm lucky, I hear nothing. But if she's awake, she'll be sitting up in bed panting, and then I know I better be up and at them. And if she really gets impatient, she'll give her one bark that means "human, do something for me!" I can sleep through two hours of my alarm clock, but not through that one shiba bark.

The only drawback of the shiba as alarm clock is that she's not consistent. On statutory holidays, she will bark at 5:15:00 right on the dot, but on work days, meh...