Idiosyncrasies

Since I last posted Krispy has shown more and more of her personality. When left at home and I return from errands, she loves to greet me from the sofa near the front door with her little tail wagging. Very cute.

Since she’s quite the agile jumper, she loves hopping (with no effort!) onto the sofa and sometimes up onto the sofa back or table behind it. (This is discouraged! Too far from the ground – a dachshund’s natural territory!) She also continues to be quite a good hider. Since she’s frightened of loud noises (read: basketball bouncing noises across the street), she finds one of her safe places when she’s uncomfortable. Her #1 choice is the dirty laundry basket under my bed. Other favorites include under the dresser, in her crate, under the file cabinet. Here’s one of her favorite outdoor hiding spots:

Thankfully she’s gotten very good and coming right away when I call her from wherever she’s hidden herself in the yard. She knows now I begin to panic if I don’t see her right away. Often she’s out there eating the cat poop. Not particularly attractive. But obviously she considers it gourmet dining. (The joys of having feral cats in the neighborhood and Emily to keep providing “fertilizer” for the yard!)

Krispy’s most recent quirk to appear is fear of windshield wipers. We’ve had the first of our heavy rains. And she wanted to go out for her (nearly) daily car ride. (I am ridiculously indulgent!) And so I put her in her car seat. I turned on the wipers as I was backing out of the driveway and she nearly jumped out of her seat (to which she was tethered) to get away from the moving arms. Okaaaaaaaaaaaay, perhaps we will only use the ‘intermittent’ setting today…. This will take more practice. So I wonder what idiosyncrasy will show itself next?

Getting Good Manners

Krispy is on week #3 of Good Manners class. It is full of challenges. To start with she has no interest in treats as a motivator to follow commands. She ignores them when I hold them directly in front of her nose. She has yet to take even one during class, but she will take a few if she’s hungry when we practice…sometimes…. Second, she’s progressively less terrified by the other dogs in class with each session. She shook like a leaf through most of the first group class and always kept an eye on the exit, which she pulled hard towards most of the session. She isn’t the smallest one, but she’s definitely the shortest in the group. (The “down” command is completely foreign to her, and I can commiserate. I mean, really, she’s already down close to the ground! Why would she want to get closer?) And “sit” is hit and miss. Sometimes she will and sometimes she won’t. But this week she was a bit calmer with the classmates being in the same room with her. So we are making a bit of progress. And she always does well with the “Come” command since she wants to be near me. She even held her seat quite well for “Stay” as I walked around her.

The bottom line is that I think she’s very distracted by all the noises, people and dogs swirling around her in the foreign location. But she’ll have to get used to that. And she’s quite responsive of many of the commands (or does them on her own without command) on her own time. I think the biggest hurdle is translation: She’s bright and gets what she’s supposed to do instinctively. But now she has to translate what she knows to match the language of commands, which is very complicated to her. One day the switch will go on and she’ll get it all like Star Trek’s universal translator.