Caesar Lab Puppy

Mother and I were walking at Borderlands, yesterday, with the dogs and saw lots of other dogs and were sort of applying our Coppinger and McConnell knowledge to all the situations. One man and his wife I'm presuming came up with a cute black Lab puppy they'd had for a week and wanted our dogs to greet the dog if they were friendly so it could be around older dogs. He mentioned he'd been reading Caesar books. And proceeded to keep a tight leash as the puppy sniffed our dogs one at a time. When the puppy wanted to put his paw on Tom's back or jump up the man told him down and pulled him off. My feeling is that one advantage to having adult dogs is to let them do whatever discipline they feel the need to. The puppy looked like he wanted to play but it could have been a testing the limits of dominance thing too. Tom and Opie were both very appropriate, sniffing gently. I made sure Tom had lots of slack in his leash. And I do think Tom would have stepped out from under the puppy's paw and gave a little "I don't think so" growl if he had perceived it to be a problem. But more likely he would have played if that was the puppy's intent. Mother recommended The Other End of the Leash and brought up that a lot of Caesar's talent is in his presence and you can't really replicate that. The wife seemed more interested in alternative books.

We also saw an example of the stiff legged greeting of two males not wanting to let the other male sniff their genitals between Tom and a young Rhodesian Ridgeback. Then Tom growled which the other owner perceived as good to tell the young dog his place or something. Shrugs.

Also, I watched some of the McConnell Advanced Behavior DVD and was quite pleased that my ability to read dogs had improved after seeing her Reading Between the Lines. I was able to answer, oh that's an offensive pucker, and then on another dog tongue flick, look away, tongue flick, tongue flick. Of course I missed a bunch of them, too, but I have improved. Then, Mother called me away to observe a standoff with Niko in the doorway and Opal wanting to get through. Opal was tongue flicking and doing look aways and it was nice to be able to apply it to a real dog not just film or still pictures. Then, Niko let Opal pass. Good cat. I think he is a good disciplinarian. His bites, and he doesn't bite, just opens his mouth at you, are well timed and get the "please don't pick me up and I don't want you to pet me right now" message across.