I take him for walks every morning and pass by a classmate's house. She has two dogs:
-Delaney, a happy-go-lucky golden retriever with the typical goofball retriever attitude.
-Dublin; he's what we students on the island fondly refer to as "coconut retrievers," basically your Heinz 57 island dog mutt. He's iffy with other dogs.
Guess which one jumped the fence
?I make it a habit to carry a basket muzzle with me just in case. At this point I had two options - frantically scramble to put the muzzle on and stress Chance (and myself) out, or remain calm and command Chance to do the same. Took the high road with this one. Dublin is a runner, so if I tried running away, he'd chase us. As he reduced the distance in between us to just a few feet I commanded Chance to look-at-me while I got myself between the two. As Dublin's owner finally came over to get him, he ran off. At this point, I could calmly muzzle Chance and began walking in the opposite direction thinking they'd be gone awhile and I could get away. I'll be damned if Dublin didn't come peeling back around the corner and run straight up to us. Chance still stayed calm, although at this point Dublin was bum sniffing. Chance didn't want to interact with him, so I continued feeding him kibble which he calmly took. One of the other residents in the complex was able to call Dublin over and grab him.
And then the golden jumped the fence...
In typical retriever fashion, she came bouncing straight up and began bum sniffing with Chance. It took him all of five seconds for his tense body to loosen and relax. It was almost like he took a deep breath and just let go. All of the sudden, the tail came up and started wobbling (friendly wobbling) and he went in for a bum sniff. Fortunately, the golden was a bit better trained, and as the now out-of-breath owner returned and called her back, Chance actually tried following her in. Go figure.
Later in the walk (sans muzzle again), I dropped the leash to work on sit-stay-come. Forgot to look for kitties
. Chance didn't. He took off like usual, but this time I was able to call him off mid-kitty pursuit. Needless to say, he got a nice big rawhide yesterday.
