Monday, February 23, 2009

Street Legal

Finn recently finished up all of his vaccinations, which means that we can finally take him out in the world. I worried about all of the socialization that he wasn’t getting. All of the books and websites tell you how it’s essential that puppies get socialized during the 2-4 month period. At the same time they tell you to not take puppies anywhere that strays may roam, which includes, parks, pet stores, your neighborhood, shopping centers--- pretty much anywhere besides your home.

In the end, we took him very few places. We went on walks around the neighborhood while we tried to leash train him and once we took him to a group class held by our trainer at a local park. I think we would have ventured out more had he been a healthy puppy but he was very sick for the first month and a half that he was with us. All of those vet visits, however, did cure him of his dislike of car rides.

Even under normal circumstance we would have been counting down the days until his final vaccination but now even more so. Last week Finn finally got to go to the dog park for the first time. We were so much more excited than him.



He did a great job. Our local dog park is split in two; one for under 20 pounds and one for over 20 pounds. On his first trip there, the under park had only one very small dog in it so we ventured to the large dog area. He loved being off leash and held his ground nicely around the big dogs. He’ll eventually be a big dog so it probably doesn’t hurt to have him around his future peers.

Our trainer tried to tell us that Finn was an aggressive dog but we have learned that aggressive is not the right word. Finn can be stubborn and obstinate but he’s also confident and bold—two important traits of his bread. No matter how many times he was run over by the big dogs, he still approached them to play. It was nice to see how submissive he became when it was clear he was being dominated. Even when he plays with smaller dogs, he will go into the down position because he’s aware that while they are taking swipes at him, he should not swipe back. Maybe when he’s older we’ll see more signs of aggression but right now he is a friendly, good-spirited puppy.

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