It has come as something as a shock to me that Pickles has become a moderately well behaved dog, and by that I mean better behaved than most. I don't know how it happened.
She probably would not win a dog obedience contest, but she knows the basic commands. Sit, down, stay, guess which hand & get away from the cat. When we're in walking mode, she walks at my speed, speeding up when I do, stopping when I do and so on. When she's in her groove, I barely have to hold the leash. I didn't do anything special, just lots and lots of walking, every day(over 2 miles this morning), and somehow I managed to let her know my expectations. She stays at my side now, and it's pretty nice. I have no idea when this happened, but it's been going on for a while now.
When we walk past dogs that are going crazy barking at her, she normally does not respond. That is a different story if we are in what she considers her territory, but out in the wilds of Valdese, she pretty much ignores the other dogs.
When she was younger, if you let her off the leash there was no telling where she would end up, and it was not easy to get her to come back - she had a great time. Now, most of the time she'll run around for awhile and then come right up to you.
She changed. She's calmer. She's more socialized to other dogs and people. She's turned into a pretty good dog.
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7 comments:
So glad she turned out to be such a good walker, I hope for that one day. I wish you knew how it happened!
Here for the past two weeks, I have been taking the dogs out for an evening walk. They all walk pretty good but we are having the issue of entanglement. (That would be me jump roping the leashes over and over again.) Any suggestions?
Heather: I use a six foot leash, but I "shorten" it. I hold he loop in my left hand & my right hand I place pretty close to where the clasp is. If I gave her the whole lease, she'd yank me all over the place, especially at the start of a walk. And then, because she's a medium sized dog, I walk at a fairly good clip. That's about all I do. I prefer Pickles on my right side, altho all the books say the dog should be on the left.
I've walked two dogs at once and I "shorten" both leashes. I pretty much wrap them around my wrists, until they're pretty short, and walk with one dog on each side. It seemed to work.
"get away from the cat" - totally cracked me up! Dogs get older and they mellow - cats NEVER mellow.
That is terrific. There is nothing that scares me worse than when our Boston Terrier gets out of the fenced in area. She goes and will not stop. Luckily, we have found her. I'd love to have a dog that would come when called.
Grace: Aint that the truth!
Karen: I'm still a little nervous when Pickles runs loose - we have a large area, but there is nothing to keep her from taking off.
She's out of her teen years and into adulthood.
linlah: Yep, that's what I figure. She still has her goofiness, but not like before.
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