The Doggs brought their own dog when they visited us this weekend. Kael is a toy fox terrier, all of ten months and eleven pounds, and yet he managed to hold his own in wrestling matches with my 85-pound part golden retriever, part greyhound, part great Dane, part Shetland pony, and whatever the hell else you think because we know the shelter was totally wrong with medium-sized German shepherd cross. It's always heartening to watch Kucha get along with another dog, especially given that a few years ago we thought we might have to put her down.

Kucha suffers from That Scary Dog Syndrome. She's a total sweetheart, but because she's so massive people fear her. It didn't help when she jumped up on new people coming into our house -- we knew she just wanted a hug and a kiss, but it didn't reassure our petite friend who almost weighed less than the dog. Even her name is scary -- rarely can I tell it to people without incurring a panicked refrain of "Cujo?"

There was a period when Kucha started biting, barking, acting out. She'd whirl on people who tried to pet her haunches -- got Sed more than once, my brother, his girlfriend. The vet said it could be hip dysplasia, but an X-ray ruled that out. Sed took her to obedience courses, which seemed to help, at least to an extent, but the behavior remained.

The last straw was when she attacked another dog. One quick jaunt to the mailbox gave her just enough time to kick open our screen door and clamp her jaws around the head of a passing border collie. She didn't hurt the other dog, luckily, but it did mean we were going to serious obedience classes, not just the rinky-dink courses they hold at PetSmart.

The first day of class Kucha got muzzled. They made it sound like it wasn't bad -- her fear around other dogs might mark her as a target, they told me, and the muzzle would preclude her biting and showing that fear -- but suddenly, there's That Scary Dog again. Others in the class were grouping us together with the German shepherd who wouldn't sit still and the black Lab that wouldn't stop barking. And I hated it.

It's a stigma that's harder for the master to get over than the dog, because suddenly Kucha was doing great. She came when called, she stayed without straying, she wouldn't even eye a treat without her magic word. It was like she became a whole new dog -- or more exactly, the sweet dog we remembered from a few years before.

There are still times when Kucha barks at another dog. She wouldn't be a dog if there weren't. But when I watched her play with a puppy one-eighth her size without harming it, I thanked all of her trainers again from the bottom of my heart for making it possible.

We still have the muzzle, and we take it on walks, but Kucha hasn't needed it in over a year. With any luck, she won't need it again.