charlene,
as I have just posted "a close encounter with a doe" to the fawn thread, I feel like telling another animal story about one dog that I had, after seeing your friendly invitations to share more pet stories.
When I was in primary school I had a small dog called Riki. Because I live in a small village and because Riki was a very nonviolent dog, he was never on a chain or closed, he was always free to go anywhere.
First two years or so this was OK, and he mostly was at home, around the house. But he sometimes started to follow me to the center of the village, and I did a mistake not to strictly stop him doing this at the very beginning. I sometimes shouted at him to go back if I saw him following me, and sometimes he after long persuading stayed and sadly looked as I went, but at othertimes he just didn't listen, and he followed me, remaining at the safe distance from me, about 30 meters behind.
Then, because sometimes he followed me also to the school and went inside the shool building, where he caused a major scandal, I started to be more serious with forbiding him to follow me. He noticed this and stayed home for a couple of times, but then he developed a cunning tactic: he stayed still and looked at me how I went away, but immediatelly as I disapeared around the first corner, he went. But he didn't take the same route as I did, but went somehow through the yards and meadows, via some dog-way, and then suddenly apeared on the road about 30 meters in front of me! I was sometimes yelling at him to go back, but once he was in front of me, he ignored me althogether, as though I did not exist.
The story goes on. He became a sort of a mascote of a village. Everybody knew Riki. And he was less and less at home, and too old to be put on a chain. A Roman-chatolic priest in the village started to give him food - and he gave him plenty of good food, better than he recieved at home. So Riki many times stayed at priest's place. He then followed the priest everywhere, even went to the chatolic church and, because the doors were usually open during the whole service, the dog quietly sat at the back of the church during the mass!
It was my and my father's big mistake to let the dog become so uncontroled. But at least he wasn't at all wiolent, chidlren liked him and played with him. He was also very smart - he learned several "commands" from the "home-school". Commands like "get off the road!" or "don't jump on me!" he exactly "understood" what they meant, just as those trained dogs understand their learned commands.
