Disappearing dogs

[bunn]

Things had been going rather well with Brythen and Rosie Roo over the last 2-3 weeks. They were mostly staying close and coming when called on walks. We've had several nice walks with lots of games of hide-and-seek. Rosie has visibly relaxed : she's much better at greeting other dogs (although she may still have a grumble if she sees them when she's on-lead and Brythn isn't), she's getting better at ignoring them rather than haring up madly. She's started playing with toys in the house, and haring around the garden with Brythen playing daft saluki chasing games. And she's eating more, which given her Size Zero figure is good news.

In fact, she is becoming a bit bossy and demanding (while I was typing this she came and bowed at me, made a series of strange wowls and squeaks, and then hit me with Brythen's squeaky rabbit). But this is definitely a positive move for a fairly nervy dog and also quite funny.

But now we are back where we started on walks, with much charging off, much staring blankly into the middle distance, very little interest in food, even liver paste - and very little coming back when called. Sigh. Why did I think two saluki crosses together would be a good idea?

I think it may be down to a combination of us having a couple of stressful days, which Brythen definitely picked up on, and made him upset (Big Puppy is rather sensitive) and also that Brythen caught his first ever rabbit the other day. He did not kill it, he just stood there holding it and looking surprised and delighted. I made him put it down and it ran away. But I think it was VERY VERY exciting to actually catch one, and now they both think I am an incompetent and useless member of the team for letting it get away. So now they are less inclined to include me in the hunting games, and keener to find the bunnies.

Although, of course, all this may be baloney and it could be that the wind changed or their dog daily calendar said 'today: why not be a thorough pain in the arse??'

Anyway, we are back to lots of onlead time and brief offlead sessions and I really need to find more time to practice recall in the house and garden. And maybe try to find a new and exciting flavour of sossidge.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That suddenly immensely heavy thing is a Brythen trick too. There is one particular gateway that I had to carry him past almost every time for several months, because once he got into Staring At the Dancing Bunnies mode he would not/could not move. But we *had* got past that.

Although last night I walked B offlead and kept R on-lead, and B behaved very well, so I'm hoping that it's not so much that he's lost his training as being led astray by bad companions, and if I can reform the bad companion, I'm golden.

It's a pity that Brythen is emphatically not a natural leader - I'm pretty sure he's brighter than Rosie - he's certainly a much better problem-solver - and much less impulsive (that will be the staffie bit adding some common-sense to the saluki, maybe?)

But Rosie Roo is definitely the ringleader most of the time, which is not ideal, because she is something of a dippy blonde. :-D