The Student

The other day I was walking Forrest. We were passing this house from across the street and he started to whimper. I looked over there to see if there was a dog or a cat or something, but I did not see anything except for a couple of lawn animals. I thought for a second and it occurred to me that he was afraid of this polar bear looking thing.



I think many of us have this wish inside us that when our students are confronted with something they are frightened of or very unsure about that the sudden enlightenment of what the thing actually is will cause an Aha moment to occur. It would be at this point that the student would slap the hand to the forehead and say something like: "What was I thinking?"

So, I pulled Forrest over there hoping that when he met up with the polar bear, he would in fact realize his mistake and feel the dominance so necessary in our young canines today. We got closer and Forrest went right up to the beast and sniffed at it. I was feeling confident that my young Padowan learner was indeed feeling the light within when all of a sudden, Forrest jumps back right into my legs almost taking me out. He is a big dog and that is a ton of force coming all at once. It was as if the polar bear had actually lunged at him and Forrest was so scared that he just had to get away.

The fear was still there even though this was not a real animal by any means. I suppose it represents something very frightening to Forrest though. Looking at it, it is a lot smaller than a real polar bear and a little smaller than Forrest. But, it does almost seem to be in an attack mode. I guess when we see certain images in movies we are frightened. Or, when walking through a haunted house we will be afraid of things we know are not real. I know that having my lifesize pinatas in the house would scare me when I saw them out of the corner of my eye.

I am trying to make excuses for him, because this seems so ridiculous. He is way bigger than most of the dogs we come across. So why does he not have that swagger? Maybe I ought to buy one of those polar bears and leave it in the backyard with him. Then, he can show it who is boss. That would probably be a very weird day.