Thursday, November 12, 2009

Guard Dog in Training

As hard as it is to imagine now, I’m hoping that Forest will one day become a guard dog. He’s already mastered the barking part of the job, probably more so than needed. When Forest is inside the house, he’ll bark when he hears a car passing by, when he looks out the window and sees any movement whatsoever, when anyone enters the house (even if he knows that it’s just me or Nick) and when he sees his own reflection in a mirror or window. When he’s outside, Forest will bark when anyone walks or rides pass the house, when cars drive by, and when he sees any of our neighbors (even if said people are standing in their own yard a block away). He also barks at the garbage bags people put on the curb for garbage day, they freak him out for some reason. All this makes me very confident that I’ll be notified if someone comes to the house or steps on our property, especially if that someone is wearing a poncho constructed out of a garbage bag.

However, we’ve found one little quirk that needs some more training (or dog therapy, I don’t know).

We had only owned Forest for about week when we brought him to the Iowa cabin for the first time. We slept in a first floor bedroom that had windows facing the front door and yard. Forest made a small ruckus when we put him in his crate the first night, but he was exhausted from the long car ride and the excitement of meeting Nick’s extended family so the puppy soon fell asleep.

When we put Forest in his crate the second night, he made his usual ruckus...and didn’t shut up. He was whining, pawing at the crate door, even a few barks (which he rarely did the first few weeks we had him). At first, we couldn’t fathom why he was freaking out so much, he had been fine the night before, no problems, so what the hell was wrong with this puppy?

Then I had a random thought. We had turned off the front porch light so our bedroom was basically pitch-black, but the night before we had left the front porch light turned on. And I thought no way, there was barely any light coming thru our bedroom window the night before, really? We were getting desperate (most of Nick’s family was trying to sleep in the same house) so I snuck into the hallway, snagged a night-light, and plugged it in the wall in our room. Tada, the puppy was quiet.

My future guard dog is afraid of the dark.


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