Training Azza 11

Azza is now about 10 months old. It’s hard to remember that she is still a baby because she is so large, 15.7 kg. Perhaps she’s grown a neuron or two recently, bringing the grand total to about five, because she has been noticeably behaving better the past couple of weeks.

Mimi chomping on Azza's head during play.

What do I mean by “better”? The most obvious change is a reduction in some of her fear responses. While we were on a walk last week, a stroller passed us twice and she did nothing. Nothing. Just a couple of weeks before that she saw a stroller approaching and totally lost her shit, lunging, barking, showing teeth, hackled up. Another example: I bought some flowers from the Garden Club yesterday at lunchtime and left the flat on the porch in the shade. When I took her out to potty, she noticed this new thing right away but instead of growling at it, hackling up, and backing away like she usually does, she cautiously approached it and sniffed it (I was giving her the command “what is it?” to encourage her).  She has ignored it on subsequent trips out whereas in the past she’d show a fear response for a couple of days every single time she encountered the new thing. Ignoring it! That is a gigantic leap forward for Azza. 

Joyful.

Happy Harry. He's been sprayed with the hose, nibbled on bits in the grass, and generally enjoyed his morning out with the pack.

Yet another example: Aramco is making a mysterious construction project involving a 3-foot deep trench across the full length of my building. Harry ignores the trench but likes to pee on the orange fencing and on the boulders that get dug up and tossed to the side. Mimi immediately wanted to jump into the trench—of course, she’s a proper little terrier and no flimsy orange fence can stop her. Azza gave it all a good sniff but not once did she show fear. I had literally steeled myself when I opened the gate to take her out to potty that first time with orange fencing and piles of sand and rocks and trenches ringing our little sidewalk, fully expecting to have to drag her past all that mess to a patch of undisturbed grass. She didn’t react at all. 

Nellie is fast but Azza is faster. Azza can change directions in a flash. My little camera can't keep up.

I classify these types of incidents as “fear of new things.” She is behaving better by showing more tolerance of (and indifference to) “new things.”

She’s also doing much better at ignoring people who pass us on our walks. I still have to shorten her leash a bit when people pass us to prevent her from doing anything unexpected and to keep her on a straight path but in between sightings of passers-by, she is able to walk along on a loose lead, her head even with the terriers. Almost like a switch has been flipped, she has been doing far less of the obsessive head-turning and staring at people coming up behind us.

I was horrified to realized when I cropped this photo that Mimi has a mouthful of Azza's skin! Man, those terriers are ferocious! Azza puts up with this and more.

I call these types of behaviors “misinterpreted threat”. She is behaving better by showing a better understanding of the fact that there are other people in the world and most of them have nothing to do with her in the potential or the actual.

As an aside, I hold the leashes in my left hand. Harry and Mimi know they are to walk to my left or in front of me. They usually walk side by side. I hold Azza’s leash in my left hand as well but I trained her to walk to my right. This prevents “braid-o-matic” action and keeps her from crashing into them in her random flinging about. I extended this concept so that Azza’s heel position is on my right. Yeah, not kosher for formal obedience but who cares. In fact it makes for a great parlor trick. I can put Mimi and Azza in a sit/stay, walk to the other end of the room, turn and face the dogs, and call Mimi to a heel on my left while Azza remains in the stay then call Azza to a heel on my right to end up with a dog on either side of me. I use the same command “get ready” for both of them but they know which side they are supposed to go to.

Happy Azza covered in water, sand, and dog spit.

One of Azza’s biggest training issues right now (besides the accursed tippy board) is greeting transitions. She isn’t able to calmly greet other people or dogs then continue with whatever she was doing before. When greeting, she goes into meltdown mode, thrashing and flinging herself around with the fit usually ending with her literally melting into a puddle on the ground. She frequently pees when greeting. But even her reaction to greeting transitions is slowly changing. When we meet up with MW and Mr. B or PM and Azza’s BFF Nellie, Azza still does her meltdown act. But I’ve trained my friends to simply continue walking after we humans greet each other (and the terriers and the other dogs give each other polite sniffs). I keep a good grip on Azza’s collar and we all ignore her thrashing. The time it takes for Azza to return to normal is getting shorter and shorter. Two months ago I’d spend up to 10 minutes trying to prevent her from throwing herself bodily at the other person or dog, all the while dragging her forward in some semblance of a walk. She is strong and remarkably lithe. It is like holding on to a giant orange centipede. With teeth (she can be mouthy when frustrated). Now, in just a minute or two we are all calmly walking in a group of four dogs and two people.

PM, Nellie, Azza, Mimi, and Harry. They think she has a treat but she really doesn't. She was trying to lure them all closer for a photo.

I mentioned this to PM the other night as we were watching Azza and Nellie chase each other around a backyard: I was not sure that Azza was ever going to become normal enough to keep. I was afraid that I might ultimately have to put her down. With those fear issues and the great ignorance of dog behavior around here, I couldn’t risk that she’d end up in a family with kids or with Saudis. But there she was, playing with Nellie with full joy and abandon, using proper signals to start and stop play, drinking from the water hose (I give full credit to PM who patiently taught her how to do that), coming when called, standing quietly with no restraint while I hosed the sand and dog spit off her before we started for home. 

Azza and Mimi sharing the hose for a drink. PM spent months teaching Azza that the hose wasn't a thing to be feared.

In short, like Pinocchio, she’s becoming a “real dog.”