Visitor (fourth day)

Remember Gozo? He's here to visit for a bit today. Why are Reggie and Gozo separated by a gate? Gozo is a 7 pound Maltese. He's old. He doesn't care for "doggie" things like play and any activity at all actually (he mostly naps). Reggie...well, she has some personal space issues. I say that because I've experienced it firsthand for a few days now.

Reggie likes to smell your face. Maybe it's just me, I don't know. She is particularly fascinated by my left nostril and my lip. She shoves her snout into my face whenever possible to get a good whiff of my nostril. Like, she literally just smells the left one a micro-millimeter from it without touching my face. I'm quite paranoid about it now. Is there something in there? Then there's my lip. I should back up...I normally don't let dogs anywhere near my face, which sounds mean until I explain that I am allergic to dogs. Deathly allergic to Elkhounds in particular. So this obsession with getting her muzzle in my face causes some concern when she does actually touch me. That's where I was headed with the story. I'm completely convinced that Karl had a talk with her and this is all his doing. For all the times I have teased him about boy-girl issues, I now have his dog wanting to kiss my face all the time. Great. See, when she smells my lip it's just in preparation for licking my face unlike the I-just-want-to-get-THIS-close-to-smell-you nostril thing. I tried to avoid it, really I did. But she's damn persistent. So now I just walk around with a bright red splotch on my face (usually upper lip) that eventually dissipates in time for the next doggie kiss. What can I do? Back to Gozo...he's not as tolerant as I am with dog antics, so it took a while for me to convince Reggie that she did NOT need to get in his face. Gozo reinforced the message by snapping towards her (the warning snap gets about an inch from your nose) and then curling his lips into a ferocious look when she came near him on the bed. Without me intervening the first three dozen times, I'm sure he would have taken a piece out of her face to make sure she'd back off. At any rate this was the most progress we made (below) with them laying near each other for about thirty seconds.