Thinking outside dog.
Scherzo has been getting my goat these last couple days! It all started with Ruby, a horse, who was supposed to have my little chitlin- a colt.
Well, as discussed in a previous post, the baby died and Ruby almost died too. When Ruby came back from the hospital she had frost bite on her…”vaheena”, and also an absess inside her and possibly a bladder infection. She still had gunk in her tail and her…”area” had to be washed twice a day.
Ofcourse little mischief noticed right away that something was different about Ruby. There was just this smell emanating from Ruby that called to Scherzo like a Siren song. She couldn’t ignore it! And whereas she had previously been great about ignoring Ruby (after some work) and not so great about ignoring her poop, she did a 180 and began trotting behind Ruby with her nose in the air, pointed directly at her…”Hoo Hoo.” Ruby didn’t like this at all and Scherzo was putting up shop in a prime spot to get a kick in the head, which I didn’t like at all.
At first I thought, ah well she just needs to be reminded to leave Ruby alone. So when she went into Ruby’s little fenced area I would block her from getting to ruby and walk towards her with my blocker (a poop shovel) until she went back out, at which point I would praise her and throw her a treat. If she tried to duck under the fence I would make an interrupting noise and then praise or treat her when she stopped and backed out.
This is how I had done it before and at first it worked, but then she began to think: “this is some new great game!” and started running from one end of Ruby’s area to the other sneaking under the fence because I couldn’t get there fast enough to block her.
This is a high risk game she was playing and I was half covering my eyes with my hand while running from one end of that little arena to another. I didn’t want to see her get kicked in the face, I didn’t want to see a split nose or some other nasty thing.
That had been a good plan previously, because she usually only bothered Ruby when someone was over there, when something drew her attention to her. But now it was failing because she started sneaking around the house and running over to Ruby. I’d say “Where’s Scherzo?” and look out the window just to see her standing right under Ruby’s butt with her head tilted in the air and nostrils flared. Well by then I’d had enough! That mixture of caring so much that you are really pissed off was just too much and I was tired of running around like an idiot. So, I grabbed a rope! I was going to rope her! No, there was no training aspect, I just wanted to rope that little bugger like a cow.
So I stormed outside, picked up the rope and called her. This was her optional call, as we call it, not her actual recall because her recall is not ready for such a big distraction. And lo and behold she came right up which lowered my guard. I could have easily roped her right then, but I didn’t and she looked at me and took off running over to Ruby, like “yeah come on come play with me!” I was really pissed now but also barefoot, so I very slowly and carefully stormed over to Ruby’s pen. I jumped over the fence and tried to rope that little dog. Of course I didn’t get her, since the only thing I’ve ever roped successfully is Mac’s arm, and she ran outside the fence. So now she was doing the right thing but I had no treats and couldn’t catch her and take her inside because I was inside the fence. I walked toward her and she ran away, still outside the fence. I approached her again and said “Sit” and she did immediatley. I said “Down” and she did imedatley. Then I started climbing the fence to get back over to her side. When I landed on the other side she jumped up and ran. I had forgotten to tell her to stay! I followed her and again said “Sit”, “Down”, and then “Wait”. She waited ever so patiently as I roped her around the neck. It was a slipknot, the kind that can choke a dog if they pull, but she kept the leash completely loose. Pulling never gets you toward the thing you want to go to, and she really wanted to get to Ruby. Ofcourse, we were walking away, but she had no choice other than to walk nice in hopes that we would turn around and go back. Plus, walking across an empty field is increasingly low distraction so her behavior could have only improved. We walked side by side, me barefoot and her covered in horse poop, back to the house.
The next day I did what I should have done days ago and put her on leash. We walked over to where Ruby was and she tried once or twice to pull towards her. After that she gave up and laid down, I gave her lots of treats and we just hung out around Ruby. Then later when Ruby got let out of her pen to graze Scherzo was off leash but just laid in the shade and watched her. Ruby made her way into the garden, walked all around the property and even neighed once and Scherzo never once made to chase, sniff or bother her.
