Knock Knock
January 27th, 2009
Filed in: Uncategorized
Heidi the 2-year old GSD freaked me out at our first meeting.
She greeted me at the front door with a ferocity that made me take a step back and ask her person, “Is there any danger of a bite here?” (I’m gun-shy because I was once bitten right after I’d entered a new client’s house to work with a dog who was aggressive with “tall men in hats.” And dog trainers, apparently.)
Turns out, Heidi was a love, all silly, sweet and playful. I was there to help with her front door greetings (go figure!) and leash surliness. Her people had already done a fair amount of work with her, so I had a feeling that things would go smoothly.
We took two different approaches with her front door stuff: we worked on polite, non-jumpy greetings if she knew the guest coming to her house (in which case her greetings were typically of the over-exuberant “May I plant my paws on your shoulders?” variety), and we attempted an automatic “go to your crate” for scary unknown people like delivery guys (where her greetings were the “I’m-very-very-big-and-barky-so back-off!” type.)
How did she do?
She rocked it. But that’s no surprise, right GSD folks?
