shoving her snout practically up my backside. Now I get the whole "dogs and their sense of smell" thing. But man, can I just tell you how massively uncomfortable it makes me when there's an unexpected poking about below my waist. The first time that it happens, OK, I get it. But for it to be a routine, where the collie was trying to achieve a first-name relationship with my internal organs during my entire visit really made me upset. Sure, the owners would yell at the dog to leave me alone, and that would last for all of about 15 seconds before she would start up again, whether I was sitting or standing.I had mentioned in one of my IT articles (https://steemit.com/it/@phoenix32/dual-of-the-fates-booting-windows-and-linux-with-partitions-on-a-single-drive) that I had was doing nigh-constant tech work for a former acquaintance and his family. They had a collie, and I dreaded every visit to their house. Not only was it hours of tech work (which is not the point of this post), but I would get home wreaking of cigarette smoke and frustrated as all hell because their collie made it a habit of
Please understand that I do like dogs as animals and as pets. I think they are great, honestly! I love the loyalty, the pack mentality that has been carried through the early canine years and throughout domestication. My friend @blewitt has himself a pack of huskies, and they are awesome and very well-behaved dogs. I also used to work with a teacher back in my school district IT days, and she bred pitbulls for show, pedigree, and she trained them as therapy dogs. She has even brought them to school on occasions, and with great success. Like I said, dogs are great animals and can be excellent pets.
That is not to say that I am a "dog" person. As I've never owned a dog myself, and I have owned a cat, I could be classified as a "cat" person. Although to be quite fair, my Mitchell was an amazing cat, a feline with some canine-like tendencies. I ended up with a pair of cats after Mitchell died, and I found them to be less-than-stellar pets; their previous owners had allowed them to run amok, and they did not like that I closed off my kitchen and did not allow them into the closets. So, in summation, I am not a "cat" person, either. I like animals, in general, but I prefer that the animals with which I interact are very well-behaved.
Especially when, as the visitor, I am fixing your computer for the 85th million time, and for free no less.
Again, I know that dogs will be dogs, and dogs do as they do. But as my friend and also my former colleague can attest, dogs can be trained to keep their snouts out of people's behinds. I have visited many other friends where the dogs have been taught to passively approach and greet visitors in a less invasive manor - without the crotch nuzzling, without jumping on the visitor.
So the whole dog-up-my-backside thing, the endless chimney of cigarette smoke the permeated my clothes and hair, and the fact that fixing the computer for them kept me a veritable captive in a household that was known for airing their laundry for the whole neighborhood. And it wasn't even that I was fixing new problems on the computer - it was literally the same gorram thing each and every time. Honestly, it was starting to get old, and I was really getting tired of being used. There comes a time when your tech is no longer doing you a favor, and you are taking advantage of your tech. Granted, maybe I could've and should've put my foot down far sooner than I eventually did... I tried to tell myself that I was becoming a better tech, as I mentioned in my aforelinked post... When social circumstances changed in a rather drastic sense, it created a natural rift for me to subtly remove myself from them and be free from the smoke and the snout.