I always suspected ... Instinct in action - Page 1

Had an interesting thing happen while at the beach on vacation.

To give some quick background, as long time posters have read in the past, I've said before that my male loves kids. When he was younger I had to ban my son from the training field because he (the dog) would ditch me in a second for a kid. Despite this obvious affection for kids over his handler  I trained him through IPO 2 before the politics of the dog world chased me away from training/trialing.

Something my male has always disliked is when my husband and my son rough house around him.  It's always made him anxious and he talks and barks when they (husband and son) really get to wrestling and if he can get to them, he tries to push between them.

With that background in mind, had something interesting happen yesterday on the beach.  People were arriving for their vacation, having driven long distances and I guess that tempers were frayed and of course adults were getting their initial vacation drink on.  We were down on the beach in the evening, throwing the bumper for my male into the water for him to get some swim time/obedience in and as I stood in the surf line I heard a young man (about 9 - 11) starting to talk back to his adults.

I wasn't paying much attention, talking to some of my own party and I had my male in a "relax" at my feet.  It was one of those things where you're aware of something going on around you but not staring/watching closely but I remember hearing the voices rising and about the same time my boy started to vocalize.  I honestly figured he was getting tired of me yammering and wanted me to go back to tossing his bumper for him but suddenly he popped up and broke off.

I went to call him back but he was a puppy on a mission.  I guess that the young man had finally lipped off to the wrong adult and had gotten his arm grabbed as a result; beer in one hand, kid in the other type thing?  Erik slipped in between them, using his body to sort of 'break the tension', which was all he had to do to difuse the escalation.

After the fact, it was interesting to look back on and connect behavior I've seen from him in his past to the present.  Also interesting to see the effect an 80lb German Shepherd has on a slightly innebriated adult, to remind said adult not to get physical with kids.

 

Interesting. Your dog has realized that his body position can influence the two people he is trying to "manage", and he used the minimum to get the maximum, smart dog. I am glad that's all it took to remind the adult to lessen the force, and that it didn't create more problems with a person who has been drinking, you just never know how some people would react. All ended well it seems. How was the rest of your vacation? What beach area was that, and does it get very busy? I really enjoyed the beaches in Oregon, and they are dog-friendly too.

 Thanks for sharing your story!

Thank you Koots and Beetree!

We are still enjoying our vacation, NC beaches where we go every year, VERY dog friendly.

And yes, you never know how people will react, luckily in this instance just having that brief 'interruption' did the trick. He's never been a dog to want to start anything, I've seen him use a similar tactic when breaking apart tensions between female dogs in my family. We have a female GSD and my father tends to bring his female labs up to our house and sometimes there has to be some diffusing of tensions.

But yes, he's a very smart boy. Sometimes too smart, I always had to make sure my timing was spot on during training or I'd screw him up. I was useless as a handler to be honest, he made up a lot of my failures!

Love this story Rlhar, am thinking this is what a true german shepherd is supposed to be. What a good good boy and am sorry about you giving up on the dog shows; might you some day go back? If you got that far with your boy on your own, you cannot be that bad of a handler.

What an incredible temperament your boy has. And a sixth sense for keeping the peace; had one girl that did that for me and tried like heck to get that again by breeding her to another incredible dog but it just never came through again, got good but not her temperament. Very special and irreplaceable. Enjoy every moment with him. Thx for sharing your story. Nan