Quote:
Originally Posted by redwitch
Sure you don't want keep her? She sounds like a sweetheart.
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I am not sure I am ready to adopt a dog. Of course if this thread continues for 7 years what is the difference
? Z is with us to give her a safe place where she gets affection/training and we get to enjoy her company.
Z is a wonderful dog, but not a dog I am used to. I have adopted dogs prior to Z when they are a younger age and have not been subjected to whatever Z has. These dogs and I were on the same page, almost like they spoke English. Z does not seem to learn words/phrases as easy. “Where is Linda”, “get your ball”, etc. Does this make her a bad dog, of course not… in fact kudos to her for standard training, she sits, stays, comes when she is called, etc. When I take her to an open field where we are alone, we work off leash and she is doing pretty good.
I wish to digress about Z to tell the story of my favorite dog. Caly was my smartest dog, if smart is a word that can be attributed to a dog. Casey was the best dog I ever had (sorry Caly). Why was Caly ‘smart’? After training her and spending time with her she seemed to know what I wanted. I could almost make up words on the fly and she would learn them quickly. When we were in MA, I taught her the command ‘yard’. I remember when I first brought her to The Villages and she was off leash in our yard (yeah yeah, sorry about no leash). I was out there with her and as she would approach the neighbor’s yard I would say ‘YARD’ and she would turn back and keep sniffing. I could set her boundaries no matter where we were with the command YARD, pretty neat I thought… another example is she knew the difference between ‘heal’ and ‘with me’. With me simply meant stay close, not the rigidity of heal …
Back to Casey…
We lived in MA, we already owned an adopted shepherd/lab mix from the SPCA. We were pondering getting another dog for reasons I forget, likely silly human reasons like they need a companion. I was at the vet and I saw something on the cork board for a lab (no papers) less than a year old.
I took the number, I called and asked why they were getting rid of the dog. The answer was that when they got the dog it was small and cute, but now it was bigger and starting to pull the couch around. I did not ask for clarification, but had visions in my head of a dog with its mouth on the living room couch pulling it out to the kitchen. Off I went to investigate this couch pulling dog…
What I learned was they kept her on a front enclosed porch with her leash around a PVC couch. I took her outside and there was an immediate connection. This was not an alpha dog, this was the kind of dog people dream of. These ‘people’ had no clue what they had; it was ‘calm submissive’ out of the box. I told them I would take the dog home to be sure it could live with our existing dog.
She had one mark against her. They named her Buffy (sp?), really, Buffy? I could not imagine myself out in the yard yelling Buffy, Buffy, come on girl….
I got her home and the two dogs met in the yard, ran around a bit without issue, so I figured we were good to go. I had never seen any aggression from my existing dog. I went in the house with the dogs and I went to the bathroom and as I am in there I hear a load ferocious growl and a whimper. It was over in a second. I rush out and ‘Buffy’ has a hole in the top of her nose.
I looked at her, stopped the bleeding, and renamed her Casey. If I was not sure I wanted to keep her, I was now. It would be hard to bring her back with a hole on her nose…
This story has no purpose; I share because it is a funny story as to how I found my favorite dog… this dog never needed a leash anywhere, it just followed. Z and I do not have that which is not her fault, but we will keep working…