I am re-reading Life Lessons From a Ranch Horse by Mark Rashid which reminds me that we can trust our dogs to know more about Dogs than we do. (in Rashid’s example, horses) And we ought to build a relationship of trust and pay attention to the dog’s input. I don’t know if he means EVERY animal we work with though, he makes a point about how special his horse Buck is compared to others- is Sage “crazy” or is he a literal sage and I am just not hearing him well enough?
It makes it easier to believe that Sage knows when dogs are cussing us out (Think of Jiji the cat translating to Kiki for the crows she disturbed in Hayao Miyazaki’s “Kiki’s Delivery Service”: “They’re calling you an Egg-Stealer and you don’t even want to KNOW what else!!”) and his best advice is to get Mom out of here and since mom isn’t Dog-fast, to bark back at them to get them to Stay Back!! “Why does she have to walk here anyway? Thank goodness I am here to protect her, but god I hate having to work up a fierce bluff like that. We’d all be happier if we just played in the yard like I wanted to in the first place.”
Seiji and I took a walk Saturday because it began to rain- I still walk him a couple days a week to practice our non-reactive skills under low-stimulus conditions- and we went to the horses before he began to balk. Not so much at the horses- all his senses were directed at the Big-Bigger-Biggest House wherein lives another reactive dog. He would go no further. I no longer ask him to, and we turned around for home.
Now I ought to point out that a popular flavor of dog handling would say I need to force him through it and make him follow his leader, and thus he would surrender his judgement in the matter and become compliant all around. However that is not the flavor of dog handling I subscribe to- I didn’t choose to hang out with dogs so I’d have someone to inflict my will upon. I chose a life with dogs so I could see things the dog way, and I have seen much that I would miss, sticking to the people way only. I have been advised to not let Reilly sniff and mark, unless on my specific permission, however I find this damages the jam we are interacting in. Too much ME. I choose the route and she chooses what to read and write as we go. She is happy to be interested in any path I choose- it is like I am taking her to the library when we walk, and she likes all kinds of books.
On the way back from the Big Bigger Biggest House, the farmhouse had let out their two lhasas, who spotted us and came boiling out after us, screaming their heads off.
Sage getting reactive- the first nanoseconds.
Of course, Sage gave it right back, and I thought this is NOT something I can click-treat him through, so we RAN. I felt like a fool, running with my big brindle bristling dog away from a pair of powder-puffs, but quickly dialing through the possible outcomes of not getting out of there all resulted in bad for Sage or bad for Lhasas. So we ran like heck down the road together and hustled around the corner and parked it on the grass, where we both sat and panted. Sage licked my face and I cookied him and we listened to the parting shot barks, but did not react. He seemed less anxious- and in fact I think he appeared almost proud- like HE was the one who got ME out of trouble. “Well… YEAH! Didn’t I?”
