[ Post a Response | Ask Cheryl Carlson ]
Posted by Deb H
on 11/19/2007, 7:23 pm
216.93.94.214
I’m in East Lansing this week taking a class. Coming back from lunch on Grand River Avenue, which is the main thoroughfare on MSU campus and East Lansing, 2 lanes going each way with a turn lane in the center I was witness to an upsetting situation.
Running down the turn lane at full tilt, was a greyhound. You could tell it was frightened. For a moment, I thought it was trying to catch up to a pair of joggers I had seen going the way the dog was running. I slowed and was trying to determine if I could get out to see if I could catch the dog. While I was checking traffic to see where I could stop, I looked in my rearview mirror and see it was already too late. My heart dropped. Some good people were lifting the dog out of traffic. I was at the stop light waiting to turn, still watching in my mirror and saw a car come past me and do a quick u-turn. A young girl jumped out and ran to where the people were with the dog. My light turned, so I had to move on, but this has just upset the rest of my day.
It brought back the memories of one of Cheryl’s obedience classes, where a young gal had a GSD, that really didn’t care about her, so didn’t come to her. One night, it managed to escape from the fenced in training field, ran out to the road. A bunch of us are trying to head the dog off and told her to keep calling the dog. To make a long story short, we ended up chasing that dog over 5 acres, finally got it corralled, and Paul lifted it over the fence and dropped him back onto the training field. The girl was crying, the dog ended up limping a bit, but finally came to the girl. As she is down on her knees with the dog she YELLED at us for “hurting” her dog!!! We tried to explain that a momentary limp was better than getting hit in the road. She didn’t understand….and never came back. I often wonder if the dog ended up running away and/or got hit in the road.
These instances just stress the importance of a rock-solid recall. Not too long ago at one of Cheryl’s classes we were explaining to a client that she needed to call her dog in different “tones” of voice. She always used a sing-song voice to call. We asked her if she was in “panic-mode” would she think to call her dog using that tone? We call our dogs a number of ways…nicely, angrily, loudly, whistling.
I don’t know if the dog I saw today, even had a recall, but it sure brought home the importance once again to me and the numerous ways we NEED to call our dogs. Hopefully we won’t ever have to face the tragedy that young girl did today because our dogs panic and don’t listen to us.
Practice, practice, practice your recall in a variety of safe situations and in all variety of ways.
| 66 |
|
Message Thread:
|
