But he finally learned how to smile for photos and stop looking sad!
Also, where'd his ears go?
No new photos from anyone else, but I did take a couple of the kids here:
Rippa shows off one of her tricks/quirks - she likes to get up on Yishai and ride him while he does pushups.
Daca and Fury - twinsies.
Couch tussel - Rippa's looking pretty awkward these days.
Eatin' the front yard grass.
Approving the new patio furniture.
Dog couch - which is actually the nicest couch I have. The woman sold it to me for $100 because she was having a baby and "we only allow microfiber in this house for babies." Okaaaay.
Have I told you lately how squishably adorable I am?
So Daca's coming right along. She is much calmer than when she got here. She's no longer freaking out about strangers. Yishai and I spend a lot of time evaluating our approach to her. She is so cute, and so nice, and damn amazing in every way that it's heart breaking to see her react the way she does when she's intimidated. But progress is happening. In a little over a week here, she's a much better dog and we're finding our rhythm. Yishai's currently got her on errands and I have Rippa at home. SHe's wandering around our climbing gym and looking at people and totally cool with it. So, yay. Perhaps she can be brought back to be a good wittle dog.
After all, dogs like Daca are why I bred Fury. I didn't do it to keep a dog for myself, I did it to propagate talent, drive, biddability, loyalty, beauty, and most of all - intelligence. She's all these things and more. She's going to be someone's amazing heart dog that can do anything that person wants her to do and do it well. They just have to accept that she needs her space and doesn't necessarily need to be touched/held/whatever by everyone who wants to do it. I was watching Rippa at a meeting Yishai had at his house. She's very tractable, tolerates all kinds of shenanigans, but she also is allowed to do what she wants - if she's not feeling it, she leaves. I think that's all Daca needs to learn how to do.
I went through the same thing with my mostly working bred aussie. He was pretty sociable and fine with meeting people and dogs until he hit 4 months old. Suddenly he was extremely reactive and aggressive towards dogs and shy with people. He went with me every weekend to agility trials and he was in puppy classes so he was socialized a lot, maybe too much?
ReplyDeleteI worked with a behaviorist and we did a lot of classical conditioning. I also had to protect him from situations that were too much for him.
He's almost 4 now. I still have to manage his space with other dogs but his tolerance is much higher than when this first started. He'll approach people on his own to see if they'll feed him and occassionally let people pet him now. Sometimes he'll still back away and that's ok.
He's totally the aussie of my dreams as far as his performance ability though. Luckily his drive is high enough that the other issues have never affected his performance in the ring. He competes at a high level in both agility and disc. We compete almost every weekend and as long as I am vigilant, we can usually get through most weekends without him growling at any dogs.
So do you think that socialization of working aussie pups needs to be handled differently than the typical advice that the pups need to meet as many people and dogs as possible? I really do wonder if I overwhelmed my puppy.
I think it's absolutely possible to get a puppy overwhelmed like that. I think the most important thing with aussiepups is to let them to things in their own speed. Let them approach people themselves, not let the poeple approach the puppy. Tell people to act completely normal, not making a fuzz, and just ignoring the puppy and whatever it does. Barking puppies are not dangerous, and most people see that, even non-doggie-people I've learned. And tell your puppy that it is the toughest and most impressive little puppy everytime it decides to check out whatever that is scary. Praise them as they get up to the scary garbagebag or old lady.
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