It's a Baaaaahaaaaby

As you know, Gimme recently whelped a baby lamb toy. She is a diligent mother who is devoted to her little one. Do not allow any rumors about the baby missing its ears or tail convince you that she is anything other than the utmost in tender and loving...

In this close-up you can see the resemblance between mother and daughter.

As you can imagine, being a working mother is very hard work.

All that work is very tiring, so Gimme is taking extra naps to keep her strength up.

In some ways she is a bit needier. She doesn't think she can go outside unless I am there to watch her and she has been more demanding of my attention. She tolerates the others, as long as they don't look at her baby. On the other hand, when we go to post for our walks in the woods, she is actually ranging further from me than usual. So much so, that today I resorted to hiding several times to remind her that its her job to keep an eye on me or I might get lost.

Of course, partly the ranging far out may have to do with the increase in deer in the area. I've walked this same area since February and have never seen a deer. I've seen occasional deer scat and a few deer prints in the soft soil, but no actual deer. Now I have seen deer on our last two walks. On Thursday, I was heading back toward the car and saw a head come into view on the road in front of me over the crest of the hill. It was so big that at first I thought it was a horse and momentarily wondered why I couldn't see the rider. Of course when I got there, there was only a small doe slipping into the woods. Today as I was coming up the hill I saw another doe slipping into the woods.

Gimme didn't see any of these, but she definitely smells them. Her behavior when she smells fresh deer is distinct. She starts hopping around in the long grass on either side of the pipeline road, like a non-stop EverReady Bunny. Back and forth, up and down, then races around in big circles. Occasionally she feints into the woods, but never more than ten feet. And she comes out of the woods five times as fast as she goes in. I don't understand how a dog that faces down Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters with so much bravado can be intimidated by the possibility of coming face to face with deer.

She's been doing well in classes, with one exception. She absolutely doesn't know what "heel" means anymore. It is as if some virus went into her mental harddrive and selectively erased that section of knowledge. All her other behaviors are as strong as they have ever been. She continues to be the star of the classes. But we cannot do even one step of heeling. I discussed it at length with my instructor and she sees the same thing. She said the look Gimme gives when I give the "heel" cue is like she hasn't a clue what I want. Between us we can't think of anything we've done in training that might have caused it. Her sit-stay, down-stay, signal exercises, recalls of all types (she has several different ones), freestyle moves, eye contact game, ability to freeshape and target - everything else is just the same as its been before. Only heeling is affected and that is regardless of where I am doing it - though I can get two steps in my living room and zero steps at class.

For that reason, we are chalking it up to hormones due to the recent "whelping". Our guess is the hormones are making her unable to focus while moving, having to exercise self control, and with distraction. She can do her self-control exercises while still, as well as all the other moving exercises, regardless of distraction. I know when I first went through menopause I had the focus capability of a gnat... so I am assuming this is it. In the meantime, I am reteaching heel from the very beginning, as if we'd never done it before.

One thing that was very nice during the discussion was when Ursula asked me if I'd noticed any deterioration in any of her other behaviors. I said "no". Then she said, "Well, her recall is so good it could deteriorate a lot before anyone would ever notice." Naturally I love hearing compliments like that - especially since we've worked sooooo hard on that.