Posts Tagged ‘canine instinct’
Allowing Urges
It’s been a while since I gushed about the progress we are enjoying with Asher as he matures into his last few months before turning 4. He is growing ever so close to the free-roaming farm-type dog we’ve been envisioning him becoming for the nearly three years since we adopted him.
The biggest accomplishments are his understanding of our property borders (and for the most part, respecting them) and his increasingly dependable responses to being called to return to us from wherever he has wandered.
Take a moment to absorb the clean, snowy landscape in the photo above, where he is breaking trail for the first time since we got all that snow. It is a treat for us to be able to allow him to trot ahead on his own to explore what catches his attention.
When possible, I like to allow him to follow his instinctual urge to dig. We try to cut him off when he wants to dig in the yard, so it is fun to let him go at it in the woods without restriction. When we are on the edge of a trail, it tends to come down to my mood.
Yesterday, I felt like letting him have his fun.
The pristine, snowy landscape looked a little more like a crime scene after he got done. No burrowing rodents were harmed in the making of his calamitous mess.
The next hurdle of training that would be nice to achieve is for him to respectfully greet visitors, which would involve less loud barking and no attempts to stand with his paws on their chest. The difficulty I see us facing is our insecurity about his behavior around the arrival of visitors, which leads to our anxiety, which he then feels, triggering his instinct to take control and protect us by doing the very things we don’t want him to do.
It is satisfying to have him unleash his “big boy bark” when strangers show up at our door, but we haven’t mastered the skills of discipline to have him heel or sit down and shut up when we call him off. When guests show up, we tend to rely on a leash during the greeting phase.
We keep reminding ourselves that we’ve successfully trained him to respect a lot of commands, so we just need to keep working on each next step with the same consistency that has worked for us before.
His urge to climb on people is one we don’t want to allow. Zooming around outside and chasing squirrels and rabbits in our yard and woods are urges we can grant, as long as he comes when called and stays within our property boundaries.
He behaves like he’s a dog or something, you know? We just have to keep improving our game of being responsible dog parents.
.
.
Nose Knows
Against my best effort to thwart Delilah getting after something we wouldn’t want her to have, I came out entirely outmatched. It’s not that I doubt her olfactory abilities, it’s just that I’ve seen her get excited over so many spots that turn up nothing that I hoped this would be one of those.
It’s not uncharacteristic for her to venture off-trail to follow some critter’s paw prints, stopping at whatever point I decide to lock her retracting leash. I rarely allow her to go past our property line and usually stop her from forcing me to step off the trail, but generally grant her the added excitement of some varied explorations beyond the obvious path.
The other day, she fervently wanted to go after something that she sensed while we were still on the trail. With a complete lack of interest in her goal, I waited as she made her way as far as the leash reached into a tangle of growth. I waited and waited.
We each held our ground until I finally decided to tug the leash and talk her into coming back to the trail. She reluctantly came out, took a couple of steps on the trail, and then headed right back into that tangle from a new angle. She really wanted something in there, so I decided to take a look for myself.
I pulled her back until I could clip her leash to the nearest tree and then I wove my way through the mess to look for the most likely attraction, typically, something dead.
Finding nothing, I came out again to let Delilah have her wish and allowed her to get all the way in there so she could sniff around and find nothing, too.
She rushed back in there and made her way directly to an undisturbed spot of snow, put her face in it and immediately started crunching on some bones. That was exactly what I didn’t want to happen.
I had to go back into the tangle again because she showed no interest in coming out to the trail at the moment. I negotiated a release of her clenched jaw holding what looked like a rib bone.
It was about fifteen feet from the trail under the snow and her nose absolutely knew it was there, most likely dropped by some predator who had cleaned the meat off and left it for other scavengers.
With the fresh bone now tucked into the back pocket of my overalls, I had Delilah’s full attention all the way back to the house. In reward for her letting me take the precious find away from her, I served up a sanctioned purchased bone in place of the wildlife remains of unknown condition.
Her nose didn’t seem at all disappointed in the difference.
.
.
Nose Prints
Over the weekend, while in the midst of my planking and stretching routine, I glanced out the bedroom door and noticed a message written on the glass.
Can you see it?
Delilah wrote it with her nose. What do you think she scribed?
My first impression was, “Too Much.”
I think maybe she was referring to the endless taunt of squirrels frolicking about on the other side of our doors and windows, and her unrelenting urge to chase after them.
“Who? Me?” she says.
.
.
Please No
Not again. This morning, we are wondering what we will find when the door to the chicken coop is opened. Yesterday, Delilah once again broke a hook holding her leash and this time attacked the Buff Orpington hen.
I was up on the other side of the house splitting wood when my phone rang. Cyndie’s voice immediately revealed something was wrong.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Intent on making my way through the entire pile of logs stacked at the base of the big oak tree, which first required sledge-hammering them out of the frozen block they had become, I had already fought off several urges to take a break and do something else.
I couldn’t deny the urgency implied by Cyndie’s call.
Rushing down to the sunny southern end of the barn, I found Cyndie standing with the chicken in her arms. She wanted me to hold the bird so she could search for visible injury that would explain the blood on the ground. Finding nothing, she took the Buff back and asked me to look.
I suggested she give the hen a chance to stand on her own and we could watch her. The Buff stood just fine, but that is when I noticed blood on the beak. It appears the injury was internal.
We are hoping maybe she just bit her tongue. She was breathing and swallowing, with some effort, and the bleeding did not appear to be continuing more than the initial small amount.
If she survived the night, the next goal will be to witness her drinking water and eventually eating food.
As soon as Cyndie had reached the dog and saved the chicken, she marched Delilah up to the house and shut her inside. When we came in for lunch, it was pretty clear the fiercely carnivorous canine was aware she had displeased her master. Her body language was all about remorse.
It was hard to not continue being extremely mad with Delilah for hurting the chicken, but that moment was now in the past.
I decided to take her out for a heavy-duty workout. Strapping on snowshoes, I headed off to pack down a path on our trails that hadn’t received much attention since the last few snowfall events.
Since Delilah has a compulsion to be out in front and pull, that meant she was breaking trail most of the way and expending more energy than normal, which worked right into my plan.
Much to Delilah’s surprise, I also had a plan to double back in the direction from which we had just come, giving me a chance to pack several of our paths a second time.
Each time that happened, Delilah would race to come back toward me and then pass by to get out in front again, pulling against the leash to which I gladly added drag.
I’m pretty sure any energy she got from engaging in the attack was long gone after her unusually intense afternoon walkabout, but I doubt she fully grasps that our earlier displeasure was because the chickens hold protected status.
We’re not confident, but we hope we’ll still have three chickens to continue teaching Delilah to leave alone, despite her irresistible canine instincts.
.
.
Relative Something 