Which feels like it ought to be the start of a joke, but its not.
His leash manners are finially getting to the point where I can walk him down the road and expect to be able to maintain reasonable control. Still not walking on a loose leash, or healing properly, or the like, but neither is he dashing off at every interesting smell and sight and attempting to pull me along. At 15 weeks of age I’m happy with that progress.
So I grabbed the 6ft leash (we use a 30ft leash in the yard, so we don’t have to follow him into snowbanks or mud puddles) and convinced him that the formerly off limits road was safe to walk on today. We didn’t do to badly. Made it down and around the corner past the psycotic female German Shepherd who’s only restrained by an efence and training (her mate wasn’t out today thankfully), with minimal stopping and staring. He figured out pretty quick that she wasn’t going to ACTUALLY come and get him even if she acted like it. He did have a minor freakout at the balloon tied to their mailbox, kid must be having a birthday party cause there was a bunch of cars in the drive, and with her having a snit I didn’t quite dare bring him over to inspect it closer, but after a minute or two he decided it wasn’t a sign of the apocalypse after all and kept going. Made it all the way down to the intersection with the next road before something (and I’ve no idea what, I THINK it was a fear reaction, but I’m not positive, and have no idea what caused it) caused him to whip around and head for home with all speed and determination. I finally managed to get him to stop and turned him around to look behind us, see nothing was chasing us, and we managed the rest of the walk home at a reasonable speed.
He’s currently sleeping it off while “guarding” the kitty door to the bedrooms (he’s sprawled such that they can’t get in or out of the door to get at their food or litter box) which means that one of them will decide he MUST be moved eventually. I’ll try to keep the video camera handy…..
Sounds like a lot of progress for your pup.Your patience must be a real assist in training him. Looking forward to your video of cats vs. dog.
Bear has developed a bad habit. If we dont pay close attention to him he runs off. With 35 acres you'd think he'd stay away from the highway, but half the time that's were he comes from. He's so sneaky about waiting until we're working to slip away.
I'm resigned to tying him in the area I'm working in so I can rely on his danger warnings and keep him off the road. Wish there was another way. Any ideas?
No cat vs dog video I'm afraid, he ended up moving before they lost patience. Oh well.
Not sure as to Bear, we got the puppy knowing that Tibetans aren't a dog that you can usually let off leash in an unfenced area. The breeder warned us repeatedly (as did all of my research) that they only respond to “come” when they feel like it (not unusual for an independant guardian breed, think Chow-like rather than Great Pyrenees-like) so we fully understand that the day may never come when we can let him off leash on the property. We already bought a stake that's designed to hold dogs up to 150lbs (and will be relatively easy to put into the ground and pull out when it needs to be moved) as well as cable tie outs (40ft lengths) for various weights up to his estimated adult weight.
We DO intend to teach him “come” and other such off leash training, we just understand that he may never be good enough at it to trust off leash regularly.