Greetings friends, here we are again in another sort of lockdown, where you can do somethings you couldn’t last time. Sadly, a dog show isn’t one of them. Most of us have been bereft and are missing the social side of competitions. Others are cursing the lack of socialisation for our young puppies and juniors. Then there are our partners, who have seen more of us than they ever expected to and have found the finances are in better shape than ever before. This is problematic as they now know how much we spend on the dogs, with entries, getting there, staying overnight and all the new products on the stands there, that we never knew we needed. If you’re like me though, Amazon has been delivering more often for the things I never knew I needed.
We have been blessed with a large number of puppy enquiries and a number of regular questions. We go through the well yes, they do moult and yes, mostly like to dig but when it comes to the recall off lead question, I tend to struggle to give a definitive answer. Over the last twenty years we have had a spectrum of behaviours in this area. Some will look up when called, start back towards us and then be distracted by a very important sniff and make their way back in their own time frame, some will drop everything and charge back, others are terminally deaf and can’t be trusted and then there are my favourites – those who lull you into a false sense of security and behave impeccably until there is another dog or person on the horizon. Then all bets are off. The only thing that is assured is the embarrassment factor of jumping up and down, waving and calling like a mad thing, to be totally ignored. These are the worst. Some we know won’t be reliable and we keep them on lead, whether it’s a dog aggression issue or vanishing into the wild blue yonder but those who misbehave without warning leave me red faced, puffing and wheezing apologies as I try to retrieve the culprit who is having a great time. We then walk off with me admonishing the said dog who couldn’t care less. So, this is one of the areas where the Canaan Dog is totally unpredictable. It’s one hundred percent down to the individual dog’s character. We can only do our best to assess who as a baby will be the most reliable and which new owners are likely to put the time in to build on that early promise. a guessing game indeed, a little like the next government policy over Covid.
Happy Guessing my friends and stay safe
Alison Byrne