Sam-I-Am

Well, some of you might be wondering how it's going with Sam. He is an absolutely wonderful dog, very smart and drivey. Unfortunately, he wants to have my dogs for lunch. I have no doubt that with enough time, he will be able to successfully integrate into a home with dogs. And even, get his reactivity under control enough to be around dogs in public. I might even be able to do it. But I'm just not sure if I'm willing to take on that liability. He's done okay here. He still sometimes goes off on my guys when they travel by his x-pen to go outside. They ignore him for the most part.

Poor Gromit got it good the other night though. They were getting along without any stress signs until Gromit got too close to his crate. I should have known better than to allow them near his crate, but hindsight's 20/20. Lesson learned. He let her know that was not acceptable. Now she won't go anywhere near him. Tonight I introduced him to my golden Quila outside in relatively neutral territory. They did well and played chase in the snow for a while. Quila initiated play with a tug toy and they played chase. Unfortunately, once he got it, he didn't understand the whole sharing concept. Quila did an excellent job of blocking his "advances" and remained unscarred after the incident. He got a time out in his crate.

I'm sure Quila, Gromit, and Sam would work it out. But Kimba is my main concern. She doesn't give him the time of day right now, totally ignores his existence. But if he were to ever attempt to challenge her, she won't be as diplomatic as Quila. It's only going to take once and he's going to end up seriously wounded or worse. That would be wrong for me to put either of them in that position. I can't watch them every second and it can happen in the blink of an eye.

It's too bad because he's a fantastic dog who learns amazingly fast. I've been asking him to work for his food (NILF). He's learned high 5 with either paw, bow, and tonight we did weave through my legs, and spin both directions, and started "head down". He's picking things up really fast. He's amazing at frisbee and will wait for a break word and launch over my leg to catch the disk. I know he'd be fantastic at agility and diskdog, probably a lot of other events too: certainly lure coursing and flyball. As long as someone can control his aggressiveness with other dogs.

So, the wonderful rescue person that took him in originally is totally in love with him, so she will keep him. She's a flyball person and he's already shown a propensity for it. So, although I'll miss him, my other dogs won't be sorry to see him leave. Rick and I will miss him just because he's such a sweety with us. He adores Rick, so that's nice to see that he likes men. He'll do great back with Deb and her pack. So we'll keep him until Saturday. We're doing more work and will continue to train and socialize until then. This is a good learning experience for me. I'm actually having fun learning how to redirect his behavior. The trick training really helps.

Oh well, guess we'll have to go with the back up plan of looking for a BC or pyr shep puppy! That's not going to make it any easier on Saturday. We just had a wrestling match on the bed and he's just a cuddling fool. I'll miss him.