Quote:
Originally Posted by ajbrown
"Boomer", you have no idea how much I appreciate comments to help us. There are many folks on TOTV who have more experience than me and I appreciate any insight.
Z does not care about the ball. We do play in the house with ball, but unlike my previous dogs she loses interest after a few throws.
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You bring up an interesting point. I think different breeds have different things that interest them........
My ball-playing friend has retriever in him somewhere.
We had a bird dog, a Brittany Spaniel, for many years. She lived in the house and was never trained to hunt. But when she was outside, she always had her nose up to the wind and she would go into a point sometimes. She just knew how to point, knew from somewhere deep inside her DNA. She was gorgeous, orange and white. And she had the longest concentration span of any dog I have ever seen. She came from a line of field champions. But I did not even know what that was. I just thought she was pretty and the perfect size for our lives at the time. We did give her lots of outside time to practice with her natural gifts. Even though she never got to actually hunt, I think she liked her cushy life with us.
And then there was the 80-pound dog who was given to me when she was a puppy, given with the promise that she would grow up to be only 35 pounds. She had a beard and a tail that looked like it was stuck on with Play-Doh. She was beautiful in her own way. She had lots of different breeds in her DNA, but she had a whole lot of retriever. She would sneak out of the yard and steal, uh....retrieve things from the neighbors' yards. I trained her to bring in the morning paper for us. But....alas, she would sometimes bring the neighbors' paper, too.
I know some Corgis. Corgis are herding dogs. Those Corgis are so much more relaxed when the whole family and any company are all in the same room.
Our last dog showed up at our back door. She chose us and lived with us for 16 years. She was a beauty. I called her breed "Nature's Finest Genetic Engineering." She looked like she might have had a touch of Afghan Hound. Afghans are sighthounds. They gaze into the distance and have speed and endurance. She watched for deer all the time, from the window and when she was outside. She knew they were somewhere out there. And she knew the approximate time to expect them. She joyously chased those deer and would not have it any other way, no matter how much we called her back and no matter how fast Mr. Boomer could run after her--he was never fast enough. We had to get an Invisible Fence--of an acre. I really think she probably got lost from her original home when she went on one of those high-speed, long chases after deer. She could not help it.
(sigh)
Dogs.........all with different interests and different gifts.