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May. 22nd, 2026 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormOne of the strangest things about any deliberate bond with an animal is the choice to change the rest of your life. Its like jumping into a hole you can never climb out of, something with an unseen bottom. As much as any training and general pack bonding molds them, it also demands accommodation from you from whoever they are, and you can't know that until you're already inside it.
Obviously things with Robs are changing day to day, segment of the day to segment of the day. His first day he was just overwhelmed. Then his main concern mostly has been how to get what he wants; when I'm an impediment or an object to be manipulated he tried to figure out how to do it. When we're out in the big world of the farm he's still mostly like that, but in the mornings when he's more settled and sometimes during walks or training he's starting to also want affection for its own sake.
What he does not have is me as an object of attention or focus when other things are going on. If you don't have a dog, an example is: when something weird happens that my pups don't know how to deal with, they generally look at me first with a quick glance to see how I'm handling it and what I want. When they start doing this, modeling behaviour, like calm around cats, becomes a lot easier. This attention can be trained in. With Avallu it was already trained, Solly has always been ultra people-centered and had it innately, and with Thea I trained it in when she was very young.
It's weird for me to think of a dog being so old, is he seven months? Sept 15? Oct 15? And not having the kind of bond with his owner where he's watching to check what they're like. A good dog (?) will read mood and make decisions about how to ask for something, and sometimes whether to ask for something, based on that. It's like offering snuggles vs play when they want to interact, depending on whether I'm sad or energetic. Reading the room is also a great and important livestock guardian dog skill for moving around animals withotu spooking them. He is awful at that right now: the geese clear his quarter of the field when we're on walks on leash. So do the cats.
Robs has very very quickly learned to offer "sit" when he wants something, and though we're still generalizing it out into more situations it was my solution to him jumping up as a main or first communication tool. If I were able-bodied I'd be easier with teaching him to pay attention because just acting ultra weird is the most fun way for them. At the moment what I probably need to be doing is just treating him when he looks at me in response to his name or when we're on leash at all.
He is very very food motivated.
Obviously things with Robs are changing day to day, segment of the day to segment of the day. His first day he was just overwhelmed. Then his main concern mostly has been how to get what he wants; when I'm an impediment or an object to be manipulated he tried to figure out how to do it. When we're out in the big world of the farm he's still mostly like that, but in the mornings when he's more settled and sometimes during walks or training he's starting to also want affection for its own sake.
What he does not have is me as an object of attention or focus when other things are going on. If you don't have a dog, an example is: when something weird happens that my pups don't know how to deal with, they generally look at me first with a quick glance to see how I'm handling it and what I want. When they start doing this, modeling behaviour, like calm around cats, becomes a lot easier. This attention can be trained in. With Avallu it was already trained, Solly has always been ultra people-centered and had it innately, and with Thea I trained it in when she was very young.
It's weird for me to think of a dog being so old, is he seven months? Sept 15? Oct 15? And not having the kind of bond with his owner where he's watching to check what they're like. A good dog (?) will read mood and make decisions about how to ask for something, and sometimes whether to ask for something, based on that. It's like offering snuggles vs play when they want to interact, depending on whether I'm sad or energetic. Reading the room is also a great and important livestock guardian dog skill for moving around animals withotu spooking them. He is awful at that right now: the geese clear his quarter of the field when we're on walks on leash. So do the cats.
Robs has very very quickly learned to offer "sit" when he wants something, and though we're still generalizing it out into more situations it was my solution to him jumping up as a main or first communication tool. If I were able-bodied I'd be easier with teaching him to pay attention because just acting ultra weird is the most fun way for them. At the moment what I probably need to be doing is just treating him when he looks at me in response to his name or when we're on leash at all.
He is very very food motivated.
