Pupdate

Age:  1 year!!!

Height: 22" at the shoulder 

Weight:  45 lbs

Eats:  Anything we don't give her to eat.  Leaves, moss, sticks; goose poop is one of her favorites.  Her own food, not so much.  She goes "off her feed" at any little bump in the road. 

 

Favorite food:  Still likes hot dogs, but goose poop comes in a close second.

 

Favorite toy:  She killed Bumble.  Matt came home from work one day a couple of weeks ago, and Bumble was flat, inside out, and his stuffing was strewn hither and yon.  She still likes the stuffies--she has two bears, a chipmunk and a penguin--but her "go to" is bacon-flavored nyla-bone keys.  She is currently working on her third set of these.  Josie is a chewer.  She has eaten my dining room table legs and our patio door.  So it's essential that she has safe, durable chew toys.

 

Commands she knows:  She KNOWS lots of stuff:  Sit, down, off,  NO!, dead dog, gimme five, drop; and the ones she has learned in "Reactive Rover" class:  turn, leave it, "hoover" (pick a piece of food off the ground), look (make eye contact with whoever is on the other end of the leash).  But just because she KNOWS the command does not mean she is going to choose to perform the act consistently...even if it means a treat is connected.  Since she's not particularly motivated by food, or even pets and "good girls" and rah-rahs from the human, she's been hard to train.  She's smart and stubborn, a little OCD (She does best with strict routine.  Deviate from that, and she derails.)  and very ADD (Squirrel!!)

 

I honestly think Josie is somewhat of a "special needs" dog.  Her awareness bubble is huge--this is the only dog I have ever seen that will look up at the sound of a plane high in the sky and watch it until it's out of sight.  Since she's so keenly aware of EVERYTHING, it's hard to get her to focus on what you want her to do.  And when she does figure out what you want, you can just look at her and know she's weighing her options..."Hmmm....  Would I rather 'leave it' or yank your arm off chasing this leaf?"  "Come here?  Nah...I don't think so."  We are not able to let her off-leash anywhere that she is not contained by a fence or walls.  She will not come when called if she isn't connected to you by  some restraining device, or if she does come, she'll dodge and run away as soon as you reach for her. 

 

This is SO opposite of her predecessor.  Lucy rarely needed to be leashed.  If you were out with her, she was on your heels.  You couldn't scrape her off with a stick.  She always stayed with the flock.  If we were walking in a group and someone lagged behind, she would fall back until she was sure the "straggler" was back in the fold.  We try very hard not to expect Jo to behave like her late sister.  And while we have that head knowledge, it has been kind of a difficult adjustment for us.  For fourteen years, "dog" meant "the animal that behaves in a particular manner."  With Josie, we have absolutely had to redefine "dog," and for a couple of old farts, that has not always been easy.  Honestly, there have been times when I thought we had bitten off more than we could chew with this one.  But she's so funny, and so clueless, and she clearly has chosen ME as her human...  I don't think I could imagine giving up on her and shipping her off to some other forever home.    

 

She does mind me better than she does the husband.  He is of the impression that you can calmly and quietly trill, "Off!" and she will understand the word and comply.  There may be dogs out there on whom this tactic will work, but ours is not one of them.  When we were training Lucy, the manuals instructed you to use  "the Mom voice" with training commands.  Dogs understand tone before they understand English, and a stern tone that invites no argument is essential.  So, yeah, for the first couple of years of their life, you come off as a raging bitch.  But you are not dealing with a human child with a fragile psyche here.  You're asserting pack leadership over an animal that relates to the world as a member of a pack.  A dog needs to see its human as "alpha dog," or it will NEVER behave.  And an out-of-control 45-50 lb animal is not a pleasant companion for anyone.   

 

As a result, when Dad tells her to do something, 65% of the time she just blows him off.  He has been the one taking her to doggie class, but she STILL minds me better than she does him.  I honestly think she considers the consequences of disobeying me to be dire enough that she'll actually do what I say.  For Josie, her motivation is less, "What will I get if I do this?" than "What will happen if I don't?"  Positive reinforcement is all well and good...and I make use of the concept as much as I can.  But sometimes, they just need to know that they are not going to like what's going to happen if they DON'T do what you say.  Which doesn't mean you're always beating on your dog.  Time outs, abrupt cessation of a play session, removing yourself from her vicinity or her from yours...this kind of "consequence driven" reinforcement works wonders as far as I'm concerned. 

 

It's been a long and somewhat challenging 10 months for us--the Old Farts and Josie.  But we're all surviving, and, I think, benefitting from the challenge. 

 

Onward and dogward!