Recently,
I’ve begun running with not only Sadie, who is a natural runner, but also her
son, Foster, who has a more lackadaisical attitude towards life. I refer to him as my ho-di-do dog due to the
way he moseys along when we three are walking.
Being
submissive, Foster prefers to remain a little behind Sadie who is up in front
with me. While walking, this isn’t a
problem. However, when running, and with
one dog on either side of me, I feel like I’m being stretched in opposing
directions.
Sadie’s
enthralled to run a quicker pace with me.
She’s always on my left, and so that hand is even with or a bit in front
of me. But then there’s Mr. Ho-di-do,
Foster, moseying along at his slower pace, falling behind, pulling my arm back
in the process.
The
fact that Foster came from Sadie and is a slower runner by nature would baffle
me if I weren’t familiar with how pack mentality works. Sadie is a dominant dog. The only one she bows down to is me. Foster, however, is submissive through and
through, so is content when he submits to me first and then to his mom, Sadie.
Both
dogs are a newer hybrid called Bossies.
These are a mix of Australian Shepherds and Boarder Collie’s. Each breed in itself has super high energy
and intelligence. My dogs are no
exception. In fact, the day I got Sadie,
I found myself utterly perplexed by the extent of energy she had. After playing with my other dog and me for
three hours, I took Sadie for a 6.33-mile mountain run, thinking that would
spend her energy. It didn’t. More Energizer Bunnyesque than I am, those
activities only served to make her more
energized.
Oh, my!
In
the seven and a half months I’ve had Sadie, we’ve settled into a wonderful
routine where she gets plenty of chances to expend her energy while I benefit
from having such a high-energy dog. When
Foster became available to adopt, I was struck, when first meeting him, at how
different his energy level was from that of his mom, Sadie. It’s taken the five months I’ve had him to
get Foster to keep up with Sadie and me while walking. Nowadays, he seems thrilled to maintain our
pace. Thus I figured the transition to
teaching him to run with us would go smoothly.
It
is, I suppose, though Foster wants to go at a pace that’s far slower than Sadie
and me—his ho-di-do-I’m-in-no-hurry pace.
One would think that a simple tug on his leash with encouraging words
would get him to speed up, but it doesn’t.
Foster is so submissive by nature, that the slightest hint of pressure
on his choke chain caused him to slow down, his believing he’s done something
to displease me. Thus my dilemma with
trying to teach him to run at a quicker pace.
Sometimes
verbally encouraging him to hurry along, without tugging on the leash, yields
positive results, but not consistently enough.
So, today, I tried something different.
I walk and run my dogs with super short leashes that consist of only the
handle of the leash—no length to the leash itself. This allows me to keep the dogs right by my
side. As such, I know that if I drop the
handle of the leash, Foster won’t trip on it and believes that we’re still
attached. This served to help with his
training today.
When
Foster began to lag behind Sadie and me to the point he was pulling my arm
back, I simply dropped the handle of the leash and continued running. Encouraging him verbally, knowing that his
greatest pleasure is to please me, I was fairly certain that Foster would
endeavor to keep up with Sadie and me.
My gut instinct paid off, and when I looked back, I discovered that
Foster had increased his speed all on his own to keep pace with us, remaining
just behind and off to my right side.
Yay!
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