After crossing off one of my long-awaited bucket list items today (vacuuming out the van…haha), I couldn’t help but be reminded of how absolutely freaked out our dog gets whenever she hears or sees the vacuum.
She was fairly interested when I was setting up the extension cord, but when I disappeared back into the recesses of our oblong house, she obviously heard what sounded to her like a Shop-vac being moved. Wow…she’s good. When I came back out into the patio area with it, she was cowering in the most obscure corner she could locate.
We don’t know why she’s so obsessively scared of the thing. We don’t know if it’s simply due to the fact that it makes a loud noise. For we do know she’s very nervous about such noises. Or if it’s due to the fact that many years ago once when she was really dirty and it was too cold to give her a bath, we Shop-vac(ed) her. We could hear the dirt going through the tube. I’m not really sure but I’m leaning toward the cleaning episode over the noise, although the noise is probably a factor.
So, since I already had the Shop-vac out there, I decided that before I took it back inside, I might as well teach the dog how to not be afraid of the vacuum cleaner. And also since I decided to record the lesson with a few photos, I figured I might as well expand the lesson to include how to not be afraid of the the Shop-vac AND the camera at the same time.
A totally incidental and unplanned lesson objective turned out to be how not be afraid of the Shop-vac and the camera at the same time while peeing wherever you slunk off too while the aforementioned items were repositioned to a proximity suitable for teaching the lesson. (actually, she didn’t pee, but she did tremble excessively and may have gone into a state of doggy shock…but don’t worry…she seems to have come out of it just fine).
Post-Lesson #1 reflections:
- I don’t think she’s over her fear of the the Shop-vac or the camera.
- I think she still learned that she can be near the Shop-vac AND the camera and survive it.
- I don’t think she’ll remember this when we eventually have Lesson #2.
- I think she didn’t understand the point of the lesson.
- Finally, I think the next chance she gets, she’ll probably trip me and bite half my face off which, of course, would be messy and would require the use of the Shop-vac. Learning can be a vicious cycle.
Knowing Your ABCDs 
Maybe a better title for this one would have been “Lesson #1 – How to TORTURE your dog”….you shop-vac’d your dog? Hee hee … poor little pup.
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