We first-year vet students are starting to crack under the pressure. We have so much material to review and learn in the next two weeks but we are all mentally exhausted. We needed a break!
About 15 miles up the freeway there was a big, four-day dog show that included conformation, agility, obedience, and rally. I knew it would also have a decent complement of vendors. So I convinced four of my fellow students to go on Saturday morning. Three of us brought dogs.
I decided this was the perfect time to see what Archie was going to do in that kind of scene. It would give me a feel for additional training that he might need.
Because he's still working on leash behavior, I thought that he should wear a harness instead of a collar. I found Harry's red harness from his Dogz Rule! flyball days and decided to use that. It was a good choice, and maybe it transmitted some good juju to my puppy.
I learned that Archie is the most chill, happy little fox terrier to grace this planet.
He didn't freak out over the chaos of the conformation arena, with the stench of cigarette smoke, baby powder, and dog pee underlain by a whiff of desperation. He didn't lunge at other dogs or jump on people.
No jumping unless they invited him to do so. Every single vendor selling food thought he was the cutest thing ever and started stuffing him with treat samples. He was into that. He was also perfectly happy to greet anybody willing to greet him (he's never met a stranger, as they say) with tail wags and kisses if they let him.
In the agility arena, he didn't stare into other dog's crates or try to grab treat bags from chairs. When we sat in the bleachers to watch some runs, he sat in my lap watching every single dog with great concentration and absorption. He didn't bark or whine or get wound up at the fast ones, but he never took his eyes off the dogs in the ring. Timers buzzing, teeters slapping the ground, judges calling points--none of this seemed to faze him. There were dogs all around us but he had eyes only for the ones in the rings.
I ran into two agility friends of my friend Anne, and, after greeting him, they immediately started asking Archie for sits and downs for treats. He was happy to comply with that as well--on a cold concrete floor surrounded by dogs and people. Amazing. You can always rely on dog people for some solid people-puppy interactions.
Archie is a delight and a challenge by equal turns. And I think we can call his first dog show a success.
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