A Social Caterpillar

It's been a few weeks now that I have worked on Ace's people skills. Every day, I made it a point that at least one stranger would come up to him. He's done terrific progress in some parts, and is going at a snail's pace in others. What I have discerned from this experiment so far:

- Ace loves the ladies. Of all shapes, sizes, ages and species. If a girl comes up to him, he will go sniff her with just momentary hesitation. What a ladies' man...

- Ace is not as big a fan of men. Particularly tall, or overweight men with booming voices. There is one such man (he reminds me of a lumberjack) and Ace is very hesitant around him. It doesn't help that the guy comes barreling towards Ace with hands outstretched, every single time.

- If he's given enough time, maybe a minute or two (which is quite long for just a "chance encounter"), Ace will lie down and chill out. He did it today even when he was surrounded by people on all four sides, boxing him in. It helped that the two strangers were teenage girls (his favorite demographic). The girls were able to thoroughly pet him on his face, neck and shoulders. I was very pleased! I think Ace was doing a cheeky bit of flirting, what a rogue.

So, where to go from here? Well, I don't have access to heavy, loud men on a regular basis, so I can't exactly work on it specifically. I continue to socialize him to the max, and with hope he'll have encountered Lumberjack Guy enough times to finally let the latter pet him.

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Comment by Ludi on March 28, 2012 at 10:55am: But yeah, I have resorted to squatting next to Ace when LG approaches so he doesn't charge up into Ace's business and shock him. Ace has gone from full-on fear of him, to just sitting still and doing calming signals on himself. LG has stopped reaching for Ace's head so I suppose that's progress. He just kind of calls out to him, and since he's pretty deaf he is a LOT louder than he intends to be? :D

Comment by Ludi on March 28, 2012 at 10:53am: I would love to, but Lumberjack Guy is also quite old (I dunno how he's so fit) and is very hard of hearing. I had to shout, "HIS. NAME. IS. ACE." for him to be like "Oh... Eisse?". I don't think that LG has the attention span for learning how to approach Ace - which is a shame, because he remains the one guy in this building that Ace doesn't want to sniff.

Comment by Rachael & Waffle on March 28, 2012 at 10:43am: Stop big men from going right up to him. Have them throw food towards Ace instead. Body-block them if you need to. Make sure they can't go right up to Ace and scare him. They mean well but they're doing more harm than good--try to explain that to them. Tell them if Ace goes up to them, they can pet Ace--a good incentive to stay still.