(03-10-2016, 02:30 PM)Catherine Wrote: I have sensed that showing fear in any animal situation is not good. Animals react to our fear. Running is the worst thing to do. I am sure it would trigger all kinds of response in a dog.
This reminds me of an incident with Jet, Misty's friend. Jet was a Border Collie, but acted more like a semi-domesticated Wolf than anything else. At any rate, he did have some Border Collie tendencies, and the reason they are great with sheep when trained is because they have freely given their strong predator instinct over to their bond of love and respect with their handler/caretaker. They herd sheep well when trained, but the underlying instinct is to hunt them down one way or another and get them all gathered together so they can't escape.
Okay....Jet treated anything else which ran, flew by, tried to escape.....the same way. That included tractors, cars, car tyres, bicycles, and screaming people. Most of the time Jet was covered in pond-slime and had that predator's gleam in his red-brown eyes. Nice people screamed and ran away. Not-so-nice mud-splashed people like me didn't care two hoots. But he gave chase if anyone was scared and ran away. They immediately became prey/to be herded.
Most 'nice people' weren't used to their dogs behaving like this. He was too primeval for them. That, unfortunately resulted in many lock-downs with Jet, which was a situation I tried to manage, as he always found a way to escape to come to visit me and Misty.
He was not a leashable dog. And most of the time we operated in a semi-wilderness so it was okay. But woe betide if we should meet some unwary neighbour round a bend on our walk!
Gradually I worked to help them with their Jet-Encounters. Gradually he learned to make friends. But he reverted back to type if they got scared and ran.
As an emergency measure I carried a "Squeaky Stick". (A plastic squeaky-toy shaped like a stick) If anyone squeaked it he asked no further questions and turned and shot off in a bee-line right home! He was scared stiff of it! Rotating LOL
