Quote:
Originally Posted by Blitzen
Also I was wondering how these dogs do in everyday walks off leash, are they a challenge to keep close to you, recall? I think I am right in saying they would be harder work than gsds in this respect, but are they as independent as eg huskies off the lead?
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We live in a big city, but we're lucky because near our house there is a huge common - a 50-hectare meadow, where people take their dogs to socialize them with other friendly dogs.
We've been taking there our girl almost every day since we've got her and she has lots of dog and human friends there. Here are photos from 2009 where you can see how she interacted with dogs of various breeds.
http://picasaweb.google.pl/rpaszkows...aCronicle2009#. These are from 2010:
http://picasaweb.google.pl/rpaszkows...aCronicle2010#
The photos aren't very good technically and rather boring
, but I suppose they might be good material for a behaviourist or for somebody who is interested in all dogs' and particularly vlcaks' body language and interaction patterns.
Of course, when Lorka was little we worked a lot on the recall and it wasn't easy at all; probably due to the fact that she was extremely friendly and not shy at all - the 'kamikaze' sort of pup that loved playing with all dogs, even the rottweilers at which owners of other "Blonia dogs" panicked
, but when I now call her she comes without any problem, though at Blonia not always as fast as we would wish. The command works much better in other, less familiar places.
I suppose dogs treat Blonia as their playground and to certain extent this factor spoils their obedience, but we analyzed our priorities and decided that good socialization was more important for us than perfect, exam- type obedience.
Here is another link to photos of vlcaks meetings in our city:
http://picasaweb.google.pl/rpaszkows...lcaksMeetings#
Of course I wouldn't let her off-leash in the streets (I'm more than sure she'd run to her beloved Bernese blindly
) but our other vlcak, Tina [*], started walking everywhere unleashed by our side when she was around 11.