Mystified Pit Bull Is Terrified Of First-Ever Encounter With ... A Pineapple
When Jolene Creighton came home from grocery shopping, she had no idea that she had just ushered an enemy into the household - a very suspicious, very scary pineapple. Her rescue dog, Stella, was quick to alert her to the imminent danger, however, and proceeded to bark over and over at the fearsome fruit.
"Usually, when Stella is scared of something, I crouch down with whatever the item is and show it to her," Jolene writes in a blog post. "She waddles over tentatively, gives it a sniff or two, and then goes on her merry way. For some reason, this didn't work with the pineapple. Apparently, pineapples are all the horribleness."
Stella didn't even want to venture too close to the alien specimen. Writes Jolene, "Once it became apparent that she was going to bark until the pineapple met its demise, I turned off the camera so that I could help her deal with her utter (and totally absurd) terror. I had to call Guinness over and let him sniff the pineapple before Stella would even go near it. Guinness, if you are wondering, is 18 pounds. Stella is about 50. I sat by the pineapple petting Guinness for a bit, and eventually Stella got jealous enough to overcome her fear."
In a follow-up video, Stella sniffs the pineapple tentatively and wags her tail as if to say,"Well, that really wasn't so bad after all!"
Jolene found Stella on the side of the road about a month ago, starving and scared, trying to hide in a ditch. When Jolene first brought the pup home, it became clear that Stella had never really been inside a house before. "Of course, I don't know this for certain," says Jolene, "but it seems rather likely, based on the way that she barked at herself in the TV, barked at herself in the mirror, barked at herself in the stove...yeah, she pretty much barked at anything shiny."
It's likely that the pineapple was one of the many objects that Stella had never interacted with before in her homeless state. Luckily, Jolene is there to be patient with Stella and guide her through the introductions to these new, seemingly scary objects.
Jolene beseeches the readers on her blog post to consider adopting dogs, and to spay or neuter the pets they do have. "Ultimately, that night I found Stella, she wasn't alone. Not really. There are a million more animals out there who still need someone. In fact, there's more than a million."
You can watch Stella's original interaction with the pineapple here, as well as her eventual acceptance of the strange food.