I’m breaking a one of my most serious household rules, as I type this post: the Malinois is on the bed, next to me.
I’ve never been a fan of having dogs on furniture. I don’t appreciate being covered in dog hair all of the time, and my non-canine oriented guests don’t enjoy sitting in a sea of blown coat. There is one thing I make an exception for, though, and that is a dog recovering from anesthesia.
Kessel went in for her OHE this morning, so now you know why she’s crashed out next to me, wrapped in a few fleece blankets. It was a pain in the ass to lift her 55 lb. self onto the bed, but it was worth it. Since she has no body fat, she was having trouble keeping warm, and I couldn’t handle looking at her curled up on the floor. So, onto the bed it was.
Her drug-induced demeanor is radically different from her undomesticated mindset at class, last night. Sure, it started out great. We blasted around the jump circle with only one bobble, and I was once again blown away by her speed. The horse person in me cringes at her delight in leaving out multiple strides, but I’m not sure if grids and placing poles work for dogs. Can’t really do transitions. Maybe modify some George Morris and drop her to a down a few strides off a fence? Worth thinking about, at least.
The horse person in me also appreciated how sensitive my dog is to body language. The minute I close it, she decreases the size of her circle and wants to cut in to me. Gee, that sounds familiar. Standing in the middle of that jump circle felt like the middle of a longe circle. Keep your leading arm and hand out as a directional cue for your dog? Oh, it’s a longe whip. Roger that.
Then we moved on to the curved tunnel, and we all got to do our very first front cross. When The Boss asked us to walk the pattern first, without our dogs, I instinctively morphed into my Stride Counting Walk. It felt good, though. Bit nostalgic. It certainly didn’t faze Kessel, and with a lifetime of being creative at leading idiot horses without getting trampled, the footwork just felt natural to me.
Our contact work was a little better than last week. Not awesome, but better. Doing the dogwalk on leash? Things started to get hairy. Kessel wants to attack it with her usual force, building momentum as she goes. Problem – the faster her legs move, the further her brain shrinks. Still, she didn’t fly off of it in the middle. So, we tried her off leash….
I could see the feral dog rising in her with each inch that took her closer to the end of the dogwalk. I expected her to zero in on Gin and initiate a crazy play session. But, no. She bounded off the ramp and just took the hell off. She ran up the Greyhound’s ass. She flew in the Rottie’s face. She body-slammed Gin on the way past, but then just kept going. I didn’t run after her, because experience has taught me that only fuels her fire. Still, I wanted to chuck a shoe at her head. I got within a few feet of her and she playbowed, shot a few tremendous and flippant barks at me, and wheeled around like a top-class Reining horse. Thankfully, J managed to snag a handful of her left flank, which gave me enough time to seize her.
She went on timeout in a crate, which I suspect she understood fully, because she flopped right down like some angel who knew she was being punished for her misdeed, no matter how glorious that misdeed was. I took her out and she played me like a sheep…her focus was fantastic, her eyes were trained on mine like nothing had ever happened. I felt encouraged.
We worked on the teeter, which also doesn’t seem to bother her whatsoever. She even got to walk down the entire thing, although the upper end was propped on the pause table. Nonetheless, she was a champ.
At the end of class, we finished with the curved tunnel and then a front cross to the dogwalk. Naturally, the tunnel and front cross were stupendous. She hit the dogwalk and I could see the steam building. It was practically billowing out of her ears. She flew off of it, pleased as punch, and went on another tour of the room - without me. The Boss told me to hide in a room, out of sight, and it did seem to work…after about a minute of tearing around, Kessel realized I was nowhere to be found, and she started to panic. It wasn’t the easiest thing to reward her for finding me, but I did it anyway.
The rest of the night went better…I’m sure going to miss her psychotic self when I go away for work, next week, but she’ll be staying with J and Gin, so I’m sure she’ll have the time of her life…
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