Tonilyn,
I wanted to say that Kahless has been outstanding with all other dogs. The
'daycare' will often take Kahless and introduce new dogs to their facility
to him first as he is very polite and accepting of new playmates. (Here is
a silly story, but it is one that the daycare folks tell newcomers to the
facility. There was a poor little Pug, who on her first visit to the daycare
was visibly frightened, as was the owner. The staff immediately got Kahless
and prepared to have him in a smaller area with the little dog before introducing
her to the rest of the pack. The poor owner was at first terrified when she
saw how large Kahless was and how he towered over the little dog. It appeared
that this large shaggy menacing looking beast would surely eat the little
Pug. The poor little Pug probably had similar thoughts. When they isolated
the two dogs, the Pug stiffened up as Kahless did the mandatory sniffing
and the owner was paralyzed by fear assuming the worst would occur next.
Kahless backed up looking somewhat confused at the Pug, and then squatted
down so that this little dog could 'return the sniffing'. He did a similar
behavior at his puppy obedience classes when, even then, he towered over
his 'classmates'. Kahless has suffered a loss recently as his very best friend,
a red female Doberman pincher from the daycare has recently left Vermont
for Texas. The Doberman would literally mope until Kahless would arrive.
Kahless is similar to Bobby in that he too takes slowly to strangers but
it seems to be 'place' specific. He is usually social with others away from
'his territory' : our house or our cars. His instinct to protect vividly
appears at our residence and cars! (His bark is an incredible deterrent).
If we are out at neutral grounds he will generally accept people. Kahless
has developed one pattern about strangers, which we happened upon quite
accidentally, but he has become an asset to me particularly on occasions
I take him to work. He does not tolerate anyone under the influence of opiates,
benzo's, cocaine or THC - anywhere they are, even if they attempt to flush
the substances from their systems. He seems to have tolerance for alcohol.
I found out as I took Kahless in the lobby on one occasion and he was very
social with everyone, he's a magnet - people just come over to see him, except
that he would stiffen up and growl at two particular individuals. I apologized
to the two people, noting he has never remotely indicated any aggression
to anyone on neutral grounds and found their officers to have them reiterate
my apologies. Later in the day the officers came back and said that the two
individuals that Kahless growled at were positive for opiates and cocaine.
A few days later I was going through the lobby again and Kahless stopped
and growled lowly at three other individuals - all were tested - all were
positive for substances. Kahless has since made a number of 'busts', with
no 'false positives'. We thought he messed up once, when an offender Kahless
'busted', came back with a negative urinalysis in our field test. The sample
was sent to the lab and the lab indicated that there were traces of cocaine
as well as a flushing agent. This is fascinating to me as he has never been
trained to do such work - he just seemed to think it was a job he could do
to help, I am sure, based upon his observing his environment. It has demonstrated
for me how much natural intelligence this breed really has and how much they
really want to work and please.
Hope all else is well!
Charlie Corbally |
