Like any dog, my new rescued Dobermann, Emile, is learning from both me and the environment. She’s curious and cautious, which is a good combination. When she first arrived, her house manners were scant because, I believe, she hadn’t been in a house before. She would quickly turn around so hard and fast that she gave no credence to what was behind her. The last time she did this, she’d slammed her head into a door. I was worried about injury, but she recovered without any indications of leftovers from the blow, and she’s since slowed down.
I’m particularly glad about the slowing down. She’s more thoughtful moving through confined spaces, so I felt comfortable taking her on a public outing today. We went to the feed store to pick up an order of cat litter, and while waiting for the clerk to locate the order on a computer, Emilie did a little exploring down a rather cramped aisle. She’d eyed a pig statue, and onward she went into her innaugural feed store reconnaissance mission.
She took her time, I stayed quiet, and when she seemed fine that the thing was indeed a thing, I calmly talked her back to me. This dog training adventure was as much an exercise in spatial environment self-control as it was in satisfying Emilie’s pig-statue curiosity. She came out of the aisle with only one ding to her snout from an aggressive cheek-poking lantern on a low-level shelf and with confidence of approaching animal-type statues. Her rapidly blooming stealthness and adventurous spirit are quite impressive and we look forward to adding more public outings to our roster because of them.
Dobermann Emilie Investigates A Piggy Statue from Helen Verte Schwarzmann, CTC on Vimeo.
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Helen Verte Schwarzmann
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