Due to weather and Reilly being sick (3 days of digestive disturbance- you know what I mean) I have not been out with the Wild Rovers for a week. I felt cagey and I wanted to get out, despite my policy of “Sage doesn’t go anywhere” I decided to try to take both of them for a snowshoe somewhere remote by ourselves so that if Rei was still leaving unpickupable droppings or Sage was freaky, we could easily bail out and go home. We didn’t drive very far as Sage began to melt down at the sight of a loose Chow about 1/4 mile from our house. It was big, dark and heading toward us in a lumbering sort of way- but we were in the car. I guess it was enough of a head-on meeting to set him off. I turned around and went home and sat in the driveway a minute. Why the hell was I taking him anywhere, again? So he could have more fun? The doorway to more fun doesn’t look like that, and these type of encounters where we aren’t in training mode and ready just set him back.
I told him I hate his reactivity. He said he hates it too but it is the way he is.
Surely driving to the woods can’t be so prohibitive, and most of the time he doesn’t react to other dogs from the car, but he did today and today is what I am working with. I went around and opened the gate to the backyard- there was a tall ridge of snow on the front side of the door, and when I brought the dogs out of the car on leashes they saw that open gate and the snow hurdle and wanted to jump it and get in there. I released them and they began playing and rasslin’. All the tension in Sage was gone. I went in and locked the gate back up, and Sage was silly and much much happier. He gave me that bright eyed look, with the perky ears and the waving tail. No contest!
I think his deal is that he will go with me in the car if I need him to, but that if we’re looking for fun he really only wants to play in the yard. Even though I know this, it is hard to think that it is Always True.
After lots of ball and tug and FIND IT! in which Sage distinguished himself one time for not just following where Reilly was looking, we all came in and the dogs settled in while I had a snack and thumbed through “Off Leash Dog Play” by Bennett & Briggs. Those authors are all over the stress in dogs and avoiding letting them become overwhelmed. I wish I had read this back in 2006, but it wasn’t published until 2008 and who knows if I would have believed what I was seeing in my own dog enough to act yet. Maybe my hesitation and indecisiveness allowed Sage’s reactivity to take such firm root, and I should have yanked him out of the whole Field scene much earlier, but I can only go on from here and try to heal him and I’ll be much wiser with the next dog, who I’ll call Three, since we dont know who that dog will be yet.
