Who's Training Who?

When we were at the beach a couple weekends ago, there was a family with two dogs staying in the house next to ours. Every morning we were there we would watch the people take one dog at a time and tether them to two different stakes in the ground. They had plenty of room on the tie downs to walk around and find sunny or shady places in the yard to lay down. Neither of our yards had any fence, so when we were outside with Waffles these two dogs could see us and would begin barking.

We observed right away that when the dogs began barking, their people would come out and take them in if they were being persistant with their barking. One time we were in the house and obseved the dogs. We watched as the dogs began to bark when people were walking by to get down to the beach. We saw the dogs bark several times and then they would stop for a moment and turn their heads and look towards the house, wait for a moment and if nobody showed up they'd turn their focus back to the walkers and begin barking again. Repeatedly, they would go through this routine of barking and checking to see if someone was coming out to let them in.

Until, they didn't have to anymore because eventually, it worked. Keri and I smiled at each other and she said to me, "Who's trained who here?"