Beth's Social Skills

I have just found this website and spent a couple of hours last night looking through comments people had made on a variety of topics. So, I decided ask others for advise on Beth.

We went for a casual walk today, with lots of recall, sits, downs, heel and other activities, which I usually do, just to enable continuous re-enforcement of commands. Nikki my Ridgeback also joins in with thia. We saw many dogs along the way and I managed to keep Beth with me at all times without her charging into anyone, though I had to recall her a couple of times. One gentleman with his GSD walked past us with no problem at all, mind you Beth was totally focus'ed on me for most of the time.

I love Beth to bits. Her first 16 months was not the best of circumstances, as she was kept in a small dog run at the back of someone's house, allowed into the kitchen to eat at night and sleep. Her owners were out most of the day and she didn't interact with them much, apart from a walk to the park. She did interact with 2 rottweilers who belonged to the owners friends, where she occasionally stayed overnight - however we were told that the interaction with them was good.

We first viewed her in the front room of the house where she wasn't normally allowed. She spent 5 minutes racing around in circles, dragging her bum around with her, she was so excited.

She became very nervous when her owner left the room. 'She is very protective of me' he said. 'She does that when she's excited,' he added, ' as she charged around the room again.'

We decided to take her. She wasn't to happy about going in the car, as she hadn't been in one before, totally unlike now as we can't get her out. On arrival she went to the garden and raced madly around in circles dragging her bum behind her on the floor. That was just under 3 years ago, I have only seen her exhibit that behaviour once since that day. For me, it says alot about how totally bored she must have been with her life.

She was a frightened girl for a few days while she adjusted to her new strange home. We also had her vet checked. We took her out for a walk, only to discover that as far as she was concerned, she was taking us for a run - she was a complete nightmare. Oh Boy! We had some work to do!