Za Lyro nebi skoraj nikoli verjela, da je bila taka kot praviš.
Lyra was HORRIBLE. She caused me no end of embarrassment and mortifiication, on many occasions. In addition to the behaviors/incidents I described over at the BC forum, there was an incident in Switzerland (in addition to the waiter she tried to attack during her first experience in an outdoor cafe)...we flew to Zurich from Chicago when we moved from America, and spent a day and a night there to rest up before driving to Slovenia. There's a huge park in Kloten (where the airport is, and where we spent the night), with extensive trails for walkers, bikers, and also horses. Of course I took her walking there; we met a woman on a horse who stopped to chat because she had a border collie at home and Lyra had caught her eye. The whole time we talked Lyra (leashed) barked angrily, frenziedly, hysterically, nonstop at the mare. I couldn't get her to shut up. Then, even though I had her on a tight leash, and the mare, who, unlike certain unruly border collies, was well behaved and was stood perfectly still and calm the whole time, the little bitch BIT the mare on the forearm.
Struck at her like a snake. Just barely grazed her, the mare still didn't react (VERY well-behaved mare!), the woman rider just laughed it off, said her horses were used to crazy border collies.
Not long after we went for a hike up Porezen--Lyra's first mountain hiking experience. I had to watch her constantly, just about every time we met someone on the trail she would bark and lunge at them. At the hut we sat at the most distant table and I had her way off to the side, as far as possible from passing hikers, but she still lunged and snarled at any movement. "Ta pes je prav smotn!" one woman declared in a loud voice.
(anyone care to offer up an English translation of "smotn"?
)
Last year she attacked Jan Cvitkovic's shoes. Jan (fairly well-known filmmaker, Kruh in mleko, Od groba do groba) lives in the neighboring village of Kopriva, and had a friend from Tolmin, Igor, doing a lot of work on his house. We borrowed Igor for a few days to do some retiling in my bathroom, and the first evening Jan came along to help mix stuff. (This was pre-Olivia days). Lyra instantly accepted Igor, but was wary of Jan, and developed an obsessive fixation on his shoes (she has a thing about shoes, especially dark-colored lace-up ones beneath workers' overalls), which every so often she would pounce upon. Didn't do any damage, I don't think (though I'm not sure) she ripped his pants, but it was a bizarre behavior.
The next day Jan gave an interview on Kanal A (this was right around the time of his film premiere), and in passing (when asked about life in a Karst village) related how he had been attacked by a dog the previous day.