Stupid BP Owner

[KingWheatley]

As the title suggests... This post is about a very stupid Ball python owner.

I am referring to myself, of course.

Wheatley, my late June/Early august hatchling I bought from petsmart, is, at this point, quite used to being handled frequently, and has gotten into a normal routine. All things good on that end, I decided I'd introduce a new element into the equation. Getting him used to the surroundings outside his tank. He knows my room well enough, but nothing else. So while I was waiting on my spaghetti to boil, I put him on the floor to explore a little bit, unaware of what is about to happen...

Wheatley is an adorable, well-behaved, calm little Ball python. He is always on constant supervision when he's up and about, and doesn't venture very far from me.

What I didn't take into mind was my roommate's VERY hyper golden retriever puppy... Who I didn't know was actually inside, and not outside as he normally is. This puppy is almost full grown, but he's still tearing up everything he can get his jaws on. As soon as I hear the sound of mad puppy claws dashing against the hardwood floor on the other side of the wall was as soon as I tried to launch forward and grab Wheatley.

In slow-motion detail, this is exactly what happened:

Dog claw sounds > Wheatley immediately rears and coils into a spring > Me going to grab Wheatley > Dog's face is close to Wheatley//Wheatley does a strike and misses because he's not close enough > Dog is dumb and doesn't notice it still coming forward > I panic, still in the process of quickly trying to grab Wheatley and turn that motion into a backhand, trying to get him away from Wheatley, who is being HIGHLY aggressive.

While that stopped the dog for that moment, it did NOT stop Wheatley, who evidently thinks he's a big and tough bad boy, and started to come after the dog with another strike. I picked him up. He was wide-bodied and very tense, so I tried to let him calm down on his own by standing up with him high enough away from the dog.

The dog, by the way, was completely unaffected by me smacking him, and started to jump up on me, scratching at me with his claws. Still convinced that Wheatley was a toy. From my hand Wheatley did another strike, this time he almost launched himself out of my hand.

Little dude meant business and wasn't going to calm down on his own, so I broke his line of sight with my hand and gently forced him to ball himself up. A trick another YouTuber used (HLC Pythons, I think) I thought was kind of cruel, because it takes the fight or flight response and turns fight into flight. Not knowing any other trick for breaking a python's focus from the offending party, I resorted to an action that in my eyes was not only stupid, but really ices the cake of this whole event of terrifying and possibly traumatizing my baby ball python.

After that, he remained in a ball for a few minutes before responding to me. I put him around my neck, thinking the heat and "shelter" of my hair would calm him down. He stretched out and kept his eye on the dog from my shoulder, and the dog listened to my "sit" and "stay" commands while I finished making my pasta. I went straight upstairs and checked Wheatley all over. Looking for any signs of him being hurt. He seemed fine so I sprayed his enclosure down and put him in my lap while i ate, waiting for the tank'a warm spot to warm back up from being sprayed and for the humidity to return to the comfortable level. Wheatley ended up falling asleep on my lap until a I picked him up. He wasn't tense anymore, and seemed to be back to the usual BP behavior, so I figured the event wasn't at all associated with myself or his home.

I had intended upon socializing him to the puppy once the puppy had reached a stage where he wasn't so excitable, but now that seems impossible. It certainly isn't necessary to socialize a ball python, but I thought it would encourage my roommate that snakes aren't evil if the ball python got along with everyone and not just me. As of right now my roommate thinks I'm a freak who can talk to snakes because I was able to tell when Wheatley wasn't ok to touch. (A snake's body language is easy to read... I don't actually talk to snakes.... In that sense, I mean. I do talk to Wheatley, but it's useless babble since snakes are evidently deaf....)