I've been working super, super hard on recall recently and doing fabulously; I've not had a failure in ages, even away from other dogs. Farm dogs are left to roam in the area, so we occasionally get one at certain spots - from our boundaries on either side, and down our driveway. With the work that I've been doing, even though my two will want to go and meet the other dog when they see it, I can recall them back, and they'll spin on the spot and whizz back, which is brilliant. Obviously, I'm doing a lot of other reinforcement for recall, so I'm not always calling them away from something fun. A few months ago, Shadow's recall was pretty patchy, so I'm really happy with this progress. Anyhow, yesterday, I was pottering in my veggie patch, and the dogs were mooching next to me, when we all heard what sounded like a small dog barking from just behind the old kennel block, about 100m away form us. Shadow ran off towards it and I realised - horror - I didn't have my whistle. Neither of them came back to my shout, but J had heard me, so brought my whistle out to me (as I ran towards the woods where they'd gone). I heard dogs barking and snarling, so kept on running but blew my whistle. The next second, Willow came out, followed a few seconds later by Shadow, with FOUR farm/hunting dogs in hot pursuit. J intercepted the dogs and scared them off, while I held Shadow, who immediately threw himself on his back in submission. He had spots of blood all over his hind quarters, a big graze on each knee and bite marks to one back leg. You've all heard me moaning for long enough to know that he wouldn't have been blameless in the troublemaking, but it's really upsetting that, on our land, he had four dogs chasing him, and he was obviously scared. There's no major injuries, but he was on edge for the rest of the evening and even ended up in a scrap with Willow when she bumped him in the kitchen. It was all noise and handbags at dawn, nothing serious, and they were friends again within a minute, but distressing nonetheless. It's impractical to think we could ever completely fence in the property, because it's just too big, so I guess we'll continue to work as much as possible on them not wanting to run to other dogs on our land, which is hard because we don't have any opportunities to do set-ups, so it's relying on being reactive rather than proactive in training. It's just so frustrating how the Spanish farmers and hunters let their dogs off, free to roam all day and night wherever they like, fending for themselves until they're needed. Rant over.
Oh eeek! Poor boy. How awful - that's just not what any of you need. I hope he feels more like himself again soon.
Oh my word! Poor Shadow! So glad he is Ok. What a horrible,horrible shock. My initial thoughts would be hooking up a couple electric wires over say about an acre closest to your land. We have this and it stopped a huge snarling Akita in its tracks.
We have an acre around the house which is fully walled/fenced, it's just missing gates. Which should be easy to sort out, but not one of the Spanish builders' merchants we've been to, including the big chains up to an hour away, sell gates! It's completely bizarre. One of the shops, Brico Depot (who are owned by Kingfisher, the same as B&Q, Screwfix et al) have perfect ones in their French stores, but don't sell them in Spain. So, we need to find time to drive an hour and a half into France to their closest store to pick up six gates from there to drive another five hours to the house Spain - but not via Andorra, because it would be far too complicated to import them and then export them again immediately, which would be necessary because of its tax-free status. Pah. Oh, and borrowing/hiring a van to do it, which we're allowed to take across the border. There are other things we're going to buy from there, too (septic tanks and water storage cubes are a fraction of the price in France), so it has to be done, we just haven't found the time just yet.
He was fine overnight - normal service was resumed with him upside-down between us on the bed. I had to leave to come back to Andorra early morning, leaving J with them to follow this evening or tomorrow. Apparently they stuck to him like glue when he took them out for their walk this morning. I'm hoping this doesn't make him more reactive to other dogs on-lead. They can have a few quiet days here in Andorra without seeing anyone, and then, next weekend, I'll take him out around the local town in Spain to see how he is.
Poor boy That must be really difficult to keep random dogs off your property. Do you know who owns the other dogs? Hope Shadow is ok and has a few days with leading walks x
Poor Shadow! It would be a shame if he couldn't explore on your own land. I hope the other dogs don't come back, but it will obviously be difficult to stop them.
We are surrounded by other farms, all of which have farm dogs and dogs for hunting. The closest is 1km away, but the dogs roam for miles. When we drive around the lanes, we see loads of dogs, very few people. They just don't have the same ideas about their animals that we're used to. On the plus side, they all seem to be in good condition; I've seen far worse elsewhere.
Oh my, how awful! Poor Shadow and poor you! What a fright! Hope he heals up with out any difficulty. I'm sure it will not be helpful in terms of his reactivity to other dogs, but hopefully it will be just a little blip and not a big issue.
Oh poor, poor Shadow that's awful and frightening for all of you, I'm so sorry Could this be a regular problem with roaming dogs getting onto your property? As Lisa said it won't help Shadow and who can blame him. Is there anyone at all with nice dogs that you could invite onto your property for some good interactions for Shadow? This is a shocking issue and I do feel sorry for the dogs that are allowed to do as they please. Bad owners. I hope Shadow is and will be OK. xx
We don't know anyone in the local area yet. We will have some friend visit with their dogs in time, but they'll be their best bud, Alfie and their sister, Annie, who they're obviously very close to and don't make any difference to how he is around strange dogs. Slightly amusingly, the mayor is keen for us to get the kennel block into working order again, in the hope that we might house strays when the local compound is full. Maybe we should just catch any dog that comes onto our land and chuck them straight in there. We could make a fortune from the local council
Make yourselves so unpleasant to the farm dogs that they will be too scared to come near your property!
J had two empty 8 litre water bottles in his hands when he came out. He banged them together a few times as he chased the dogs away. No +R with other people's dogs, sorry! Willow was surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing. She didn't look fazed in the least. Even when J was banging the bottles, she was sat calmly by me with a slight "Yerrrrr, my dad's bigger than your dad!" expression
I've just talked to J; Willow is absolutely fine this evening, mooching around on their walk. Shadow was a lot clingier than normal, though, although he seems fine generally and physically.
I'm really surprised about the dogs running loose in Spain. When we were in Italy I don't think I ever saw a dog that was not on a leash, or in pretty close company of their owner. Here in the wild west, we seldom see dogs running loose. You may see herding dogs or livestock protection dogs loose on a farm, but except for open range, most all farms are fenced also. One possible reason is that in most places dogs harassing livestock can be shot on sight. Wolves have a lot more protection. In our ski town we see loose dogs, but they mostly stay in their own neighborhood, close to home. If they are allowed to wander around the neighborhood, they are almost invariably friendly. We are not very tolerant of aggressive dogs coming on our property or public lands and attacking other dogs.
There's no livestock to be bothered; it's all fruit and nut trees where we are. It's very different in the towns to the countryside. In towns, they're always on lead, very rarely allowed to run off lead. Out in the sticks, though, it's the complete opposite.
