I’ve been teaching lessons for a few years.
For those of you who don’t know, I do guitar lessons in the homes of my students.
I’ve always done it this way, and absolutely love it.
Something I started to notice shortly after I began teaching…. everyone had pets.
Mostly dogs, a few cats, some fish, and some other (more unusual animals).
Maybe it’s the area that I teach (Annapolis, Maryland is definitely a town that loves its dogs).
And since I do in-home guitar lessons, the dogs and cats generally like to inspect me and my guitar case.
To be fair it probably has the scents and smells of all of the other houses I visit (the guitar case… not me).
Since I typically write about guitar tips and tricks, I thought it may be fun to mix things up a bit and share with you some of the more unusual, pet-related-things I’ve witnessed during my guitar lessons
(warning… some of this stuff may be gross.. but still funny… read on at your own risk)
Here we go….
In the years I have been teaching I have seen all of the following:
- I’ve had pets loudly (and very offensively) fart during lessons…. dogs have no shame when it comes to this (to be fair, I’ve had a few kids do this too)
- I’ve had a cat fall asleep in my guitar case
- I have had a dog pee on my guitar case
- I’ve had dogs match pitch and “sing” along with our lessons
- I have had a student who owns a snake… and brought it out and showed it to me during our lesson (I love snakes by the way… so.. I’m cool with this)
- I have had no less than THREE DIFFERENT students who own MULTIPLE CHICKENS. Evidently this is a thing… for eggs I guess. I don’t teach in the country… we’re talking urban and suburban chickens
Despite these weird things (maybe they’re not even that weird… maybe I’m weird because I down’t own chickens or snakes)… but despite it…. I love what I do and I love all of my weird students (and their pets).
So when new students e-mail me and ask:
“Do you have any pet allergies”…. nope.
Or if they ask:
“We have four dogs, is that ok?” Yeah….I’m good.
I’m grateful that my students welcome me into their homes and lives (even if their dogs pee on my guitar case… ok that was only once).
(Jake Posko does in-home guitar lessons in the Annapolis, Maryland area including: Annapolis, Edgewater, Severna Park, Pasadena, Arnold and Kent Island, inquire about lessons by e-mailing him at jake@jakeposko.com).
(photo credit: David Poe)