Dogs follow me.

They are not impressed with my amiable disposition or my geezer-cute looks.

It’s the biscuits.

I almost always carry dog biscuits. Because I do, our Lab-sized, elderly dogs, Ralph and Buddy, pay attention to what I say.

Without a word from me, other dogs sense a snack is walking nearby.

During our winter sojourn in the Florida Panhandle, that ability mesmerized dogs whenever I walked through the downtown sector.

“Come back here!” owners would demand.

Tails wagging, ears flopped forward, dogs would come “there,” to where I and my dog biscuits were.

Most of those dogs are nicely socialized. I was not attacked, bitten, or even … ahem … accosted as a sex object by Fido and friends.

In the midsection of the Panhandle, due south of Atlanta and Tallahassee, dogs are much more visible than they are in DuBois, Brookville, Ridgway or Clearfield.

There, dogs are common in bars.

Before the coronavirus caused shutdowns, about 10 percent of the occupants of beer/wine/music bars were canines, on average.

Almost all are quiet and sedentary, not getting hopped up like their owners when the musicians kick into thumping country or folk-rock tunes.

When I walk past, however, their ears perk up, their tails move and their eyes sparkle.

“Biscuits!” they covet. I smile.

I like dogs. That is a change from my childhood fear of dogs that once sent me screaming “Mama!” in the days before widespread leash laws. When I was perhaps age 3 or 4, Mom would bundle me up in snow boots, overstuffed snow pants, a bulky winter coat, a cap with straps that tied beneath my chin and mittens kept nearby by a string of yarn that stretched from sleeve cuff to sleeve cuff.

This get-up did keep me warm in winter. It also gave me the tippability of a bowling pin.

When neighborhood dogs trotted up, they bumped me. I fell. I wailed. The dogs thought I wanted to play. I cried louder. The dogs got friskier. I got more and more afraid, though even an aggressive dog would have had trouble chomping anything more than a mouthful of wet wool.

My early childhood was spent fearing dogs. Dad, in a well-intended but misguided moment, brought home Scotty, a wire-haired fox terrier. Scotty was kept outside on a chain. My dog-averse parents did not realize that being chained to a stake and regularly choked by getting tangled up were sure-fire triggers to make Scotty likely to nip at me and bite my friends.

That experiment ended in failure Scotty was sent away.

Then at about age 10, I got a paper route, delivering about 70 newspapers each afternoon to homes that included perhaps 20 dogs, most kept unleashed.

Some dogs get quite territorial, viewing mailmen and newspaper carriers as invaders.

To keep my distance, I developed a talent for arcing folded-square newspapers onto porches — or reasonably close — from 20 or 30 feet away, sometimes while riding a moving bicycle and using one leg to kick at nipping canines. Most customers were understanding. A few took exception to my occasional “delivery” onto their porch roofs.

I was in a quandary. I liked the newspaper delivery route. We also needed the money. But my fear of the dogs made some customers unhappy.

“Try food!” Mom suggested. Mom loved food as a social bonding agent, as medicine, as a sensory delight. Why not as a dog-calming agent?

To my surprise, it worked. If I tossed a chunk of biscuit dog-ward before Fido had fully launched, the dog was usually diverted toward the food and away from my legs.

Within a short time, all except the growliest dogs actually became friendly, substituting “Hello, there!” barks for “Gonna bite’cha!” alarm barks.

I began to carry dog biscuits in a pocket, either in a jacket or in my jeans.

Dogs started to like me. That eased my paper route problem, but created a laundry problem. Biscuits crumble. If snow-wet gloves were thrust atop them in winter coats, they got messy, smelly and mildewy. Yuck.

So I switched to a disused ’80s-style fanny pack in summer, but kept one jacket pocket as a biscuit repository.

In this year’s near-zero February temperatures, I wore a winter coat when we left Pennsylvania for Florida. Upon arrival, I shed the coat’s liner and used its shell, complete with biscuits.

That “Pied Piper” effect ensured me of a following, of sorts, in Florida’s dog-friendly bars. Dogs abounded. I became, in dog-speak, “Denny Biscuit.”

That beats becoming “Denny Doggie Snack.”

But it does endanger my ability to maintain social distancing, at least from canines.

¯¯¯

Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.