Dougy

By around 12:30 on Saturday most of the dogs were either back from their volunteer walks or on them, except Dougy. Dougy is a 75 pound, seven month old German Shepherd/Lab mix puppy. He is pure happiness, enthusiasm and energy. Knowing that the pathways were intermittent snowy and icy, I had more than a few moments hesitation about Dougy as a walking buddy, however his sweet, eager face won out. I went to his back door to face the first challenge, getting the chain collar on him. He saw the collar and threw his head into it, I fastened his leash and he leaped with joy. I quickly realized that I would need to wrap around the first leash and use a second one to give him some walking space. Since dogs are not supposed to be in the supply room, a visitor offered to stand in the hall with him while I went in for leash number two. When I came out in less than a minute I could tell that she was stunned at Dougy's level of exuberance. I thanked her, she looked relieved and we were off.

Our first stop was the exercise yard, Dougy did some ball chasing but he mostly wanted to sniff around the edges, catch sight of me and run as fast as possible right at me. I turned away so he did not knock me down but I quickly determined that our "yard time" would turn into "school time". Though excited, after just a bit of sternness he consistently sat on command for treats.

We started our walk and as I anticipated he displayed a puppy's total abandon and interest in everything resulting in lots of pulling and lunging. This would not do. I wrapped his leash under his front legs and up, to stop the pulling; he hated it. He began bucking like a wild horse and quickly got his back foot caught in the leash; as I went to get him untangled I soon realized that he was completely free of the collar AND leash. Just a note here, Dougy is the only dog I've encountered here at the shelter who had no little plastic collar with his name and number on it. I had absolutely nothing on him to grab. As most of you know this has happened to me more than once in the back area of the kennels, but, out in the open desert - not good! I stood up, told Dougy to sit, he sat; I replaced his collar and leash (no wrap around) and we continued our walk. I let Dougy do more sniffing and pulling for about another ten minutes then I decided the walk would be on my terms, I would be in the Alpha role for the rest of this walk whether he liked it or not. He seemed very content walking along on my terms. On our return we stopped again in the exercise yard, he still had a good amount of energy to burn but he mostly preferred just being close with lots of pets and nuzzles. Big as he is he wanted to crawl onto my lap.

After an exciting and exhausting outing with Dougy, I started really being impressed with him. When you consider that he is a large seven month old puppy, confined to a relatively small kennel except for limited outings and very limited training; he did amazingly well. He will be a wonderful pet for someone but his future person will have to be willing to be the consistent Alpha that Dougy needs.