We had a pretty mellow training week for a number of reasons, but Lilly did have two play dates with her pal Katie. And, in our ongoing study of canine body language, I noticed a few funny things.
Play Roles
Lilly almost always take the role of chaser, not chasee. Katie seems fine with this because as a borzoi (site hound), she LOVES to run.
Looking back, I can think of only two dogs that chased Lilly in play. One is Ginko, of course. He sometimes enjoys standing in one spot and flinching like “Ha!” every time Lilly races by. The trick is that she never really knows when he’s actually going to chase, so when he does fly up on her, I love watching how fast she can corner compared to Ginko, who has a much broader radius.
The other dog is a Corgi that used to come to class back when Lilly did OK with other dogs and was allowed to be loose during playtime breaks. Lilly loved this dog. Heck, once he even squeezed his way between me and Lilly when we where hugging, and she totally did NOT care. He often goes to daycare, so he has really good dog skills … maybe that’s the thing. He almost never comes anymore. But, when they were young-ish, they would take turns chasing each other. I swear it was like they’d say, “OK, now you be the sheep!”
Sometimes, Katie runs up on Lilly while she’s getting the ball or something, but Lilly regularly turns around and gets Katie running. I watched them go back and forth, back and forth across the yard, like 10 times when I first cut them loose on Thursday. The looked like a sprinting, two-dog metranome.
Tail Position
Lilly maintains a pretty high tail position, even with Ginko. Both times we swung by Katie’s house on our way home from a walk, I unclipped Lilly’s leash and let her meet Katie at the gate. Everything about her body says happy (her face, her ears, her stance), but she keeps her tail pretty high.
Sharing (Me and the Water Bowl)
Lilly can get possessive over me, especially if I’m sitting or bending down. But, with Katie, she doesn’t care. I sat on the edge of the deck at Katie’s house, and she practically climbed into my lap, and Lilly just stood there smiling.
Later, tongues hanging out, they headed to the water bowl. They both went to drink at the same time, and I was happy to see that Lilly realized the encroachment and waited for Katie to finish before trying again. It seemed like they took turns deliberately, which was very sweet!
Call Off
Sometimes Lilly gets too intense for Katie, so I’ve been working on calling her off with LEAVE IT then COME. And, I had great success this week, getting Lilly to move away so that Katie didn’t feel stuck. Usually by the time I give Lilly a treat for responding to me, Katie is bowing and leaping and doing everything she can think of to restart the game.
Whiplash Recall
Longtime readers may recall some of the training work we tried based on ideas from Leslie McDevitt’s book Control Unleashed. Well, I hadn’t worked on a fast off-leash recall/turn in a long time, but yesterday as we approached Katie’s house, I let Lilly off leash. She sped ahead in anticipation, and three seperate times, all I had to say was “Lil” and she immediately whipped around and started moving back toward me until I caught up.
It was nice to see that work done months ago is holding up, even in the face of something exciting. Eventually, I hope to transfer the concept to scary things too in hopes of averting a bad flee response should something freak her out when she’s off leash.
It’s interesting that Lilly holds her tail high. I’d have expected a low tail position since so many of her dog-dog behaviors give me the impression that she’s a bit scared.
Sounds like you had a good week with Katie. It’s great that you found Lilly such a good playmate.