How do you get over a life long fear of dogs?
We don’t recommend the way Derek Jeter did it, which was to get engaged to a woman who gave him a Cane Corso for Christmas. The woman whom he eventually married (model, Hannah Davis) came from a family that had always had Mastiffs, and his “baptism by fire” seemed to work for the former Yankees baseball player. Still, the early days were unsettling to Jeter. “Kane” is now three years old, but as Jeter remembers it, the dog’s first few weeks at home were often spent looking up at Jeter with this suspicious face, like he was trying to say, “Why should I listen to you?”
Jeter said of the those days, “When I first got Kane, I panicked a little. I’m lying. Actually, I panicked a lot. We had some epic standoffs at the beginning. He was energetic, thought he was king of the house, and I was a nervous owner. Kane would bite and nip and not pay attention to anything I said. My panicking was probably making him panic.”
As they became used to each other, things mellowed out. “There’s a lot to learn as a new dog owner,” Jeter says. “As I train him, I’ve also had to be trained. I’ve learned that dogs thrive on routine: regular walks, chasing a ball and lots of sleep. He probably loves to sleep more than anything, which is ironic because I’m getting less sleep than I ever did before… over the last year, the more we get used to each other, the calmer we’ve both become.”
Jeter and Hannah became parents last year, (2017), so he was well practiced on function with little sleep.
Derek Jeter and “Kane” from 2015, image found on Pinterest and happily credited upon receipt of information