Last night was another Growl Class.<\/p>\n
This time, it was all about meeting other dogs on a walk. Each dog was paired up and brought to the center of the room. Then, they were slowly walked toward each other. When they began to get aggressive, the owner turned around, feed them treats and returned to the start. Eventually, the dogs were able to walk past each other without barking or lunging. It was pretty neat.<\/p>\n
Except we were paired with Bear. Now, this dog could have been named either Bear or Psycho. Either one would have been correct. He is the most vicious and out of control dog there. He’s huge and shaggy and just barks and lunges at anything that moves. I thought Artie was an aggressive dog. I was soooo wrong. Artie is a protective dog. Bear is a monster. It takes both of his owners and one assistant to keep him in control during class. And that’s barely in control.
\nSo when we get to class, there’s this list on the board. We are last in line and paired with Bear. Kevin and I spend a good half hour talking strategy. After watching a few of the more mellow dogs run through this exercise, we realize we could be in trouble. They want us to walk Artie 2 feet from Bear. Not going to happen.<\/p>\n
It’s our turn and Kevin gets up. Only one person can lead the dog during this exercise and Kev lost the toss. He pulls out the good treats – leftover Chicken Kev from our dinner party – and heads bravely into the center of the room. They are having trouble getting Bear out of his area. He’s basically freaking out and going wild. Kevin and Artie are on my end of the room and poor sweet Artie is beginning to look a little leery.<\/p>\n
Then the moment arrives. Kevin has to start walking toward Bear. Bear, of course, has no problems walking toward Artie. In fact he is lunging toward Artie, ready to attack. The only problem is, Artie only has eyes for mom. That’s right. He just sat there, staring at me. Kevin tried sweet talk, he tried the chicken, he even tried pulling. But Artie wouldn’t move or walk. Just looked at me across the room with his big brown eyes. It took Kevin and an instructor to pull Artie down the room. He never even looked at Bear.<\/p>\n
They’re on the other end of the room and Artie has his eyes locked on me. This time, when it’s time to walk down the room, Artie makes a bee-line for me. Right past Bear, no bark no lunge. Now, because Artie is ignoring Bear, Bear begins to calm down. He’s walking without barking. No lunging or attacking. Everyone in the class starts clapping and yelling “Good job Bear! What a good boy!!” Hey, what about our good boy??? Why aren’t they cheering my dog? It was actually pretty funny. When Artie was on my end of the room, he wouldn’t walk. When they finally dragged him down to the other end, he’d come running straight for me.<\/p>\n
The instructor says next time we do this, I’ll have to walk Artie instead of Kevin. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that won’t work either. He’s even worse when Kevin’s not around. Ah well, at least Bear came out looking like a hero. But Kevin & I know it’s just because he had Artie as a partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night was another Growl Class. This time, it was all about meeting other dogs on a walk. Each dog was paired up and brought to the center of the room. Then, they were slowly walked toward each other. When they began to get aggressive, the owner turned around, feed them treats and returned to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artie"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Kqhb-5k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1224,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/1224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}