How can I get a boyfriend?

How can I get my dog and boyfriend to get along?

• I'll give some background first. My boyfriend and I don't live together and my red cattle dog has been good with him ever since we brought her home at 8 weeks old. Now, when she was about 10 months old, my boyfriend had to climb the fence to climb into a window because I locked my keys in my house. Once he climbed the fence (it's pretty high, and corrigated), he jumped down and landed on the back porch. Little did he know, my cattle dog was sleeping near the fence and he landed right next to her (not ON her, he said about 30cm away from her tail). It did startle her and she barked at him and ran away. It was an accident and he didn't scare her on purpose. Ever since then, (she's 12 months old now), whenever my boyfriend would come over, she would bark at him and cower away from him. Mum said apparently she almost bit him once when he tried to pat her. What's worse is that she won't stop barking at him even when we try all of our tricks to get her to stop. My boyfriend doesn't really come over any more because he's sick of being barked at (our dogs are inside all the time). We've tried slow approaches like giving him food to give to her, sitting on the floor at her level and letting her approach him on her own and it has worked on some occasions but then on his next visit we'd be back to square one. How can we help our cattle dog like my boyfriend again? They got along just fine before he accidentally scared her.

• Answer:

  Keep doing what you're doing, but maybe your bf doesn't know how to behave around dogs? Lighter voices, lots of praise towards dogs, etc. Have him maybe even train your dog the same way that you do... "My dog is not trained" is A VERY VERY VERY BAD RESPONSE!