Training Azza 10

It’s the humid season here in Dhahran. Temperatures are topping out around 102F or so but the humidity is brutal (it was more than 80% this morning, and yet it still wasn't raining). The water in the air mixes with the ever-present dust to create a hazy brownish soup. I don’t have to do anything outside to break a sweat; simply walking out the door is enough.

Still, the dogs need their daily walks. So the other morning, we set out on our usual morning stroll. Harry and Mimi were walking shoulder to shoulder as they often do. They are well matched in size and gait and I think they look very, very cute. Other people must think so as well because I often get comments and smiles from passersby (sometimes even Saudis smile at them). To my great surprise, after I let Azza have a bit more leash than usual, she decided to walk right next to them. It was quite a sight to have the three dogs arrayed perfectly in front of me, calmly strolling along the sidewalk, heads up, tails up, happy to be together in the here and now.

This is a fairly big achievement for Azza. For the past few months she’s only had about 12-18” of leash to use which keeps her right by my side. I do this so that I can control her head better. One of her fear behaviors is an obsessive checking on people coming up behind us. She will get so caught up in this loop that she will forget to walk and try to turn herself completely around so she can stare and worry and hackle and growl at whatever is behind us. If not checked, she will escalate until she lunges or barks at the threat. Azza’s fear behaviors are myriad but all show escalation patterns. I’ve learned that if I can redirect her as soon as she shows the first signs of fear, I can often prevent the escalation. One of those redirects is a verbal “leave it” command. This means “turn your head back around to the front and quit obsessing about whatever is behind us.” I use “leave it” for Mimi and Harry too but for them this command means “don’t eat that pill/piece of cheese/earring/object that I just dropped on the floor” or it could mean "don't even think about eating that berry/stick/worm/bird poop/cat poop that you just discovered on the ground" (there is poison all over the place because that is the only way that Aramco knows how to keep down the rat and mice populations; thus what may look like a stick or a berry might actually be a bit of rat poison).

I have to physically turn Azza's head forward about half the time now (she wears a head halter whenever she goes out so this task is fairly easy); the other half of the time I only have to say “leave it” and she’ll face forward again on her own and keep moving.

Making the leap from walking on a very short leash by my side to walking on a loose lead ahead of me is a big deal. There are always people and feral cats and bits on flotsam on the ground that could be eaten and she has to maintain a lot of self-control to earn this privilege. But at least on this particular morning, she decided to pull on her big girl panties and take a walk like a regular dog.