We visited Olga and her Great Dane, Spark. I had hoped that Terra would be excited to see Spark because generally giant breed dogs get excited to see each other. Instead Terra ran away when she saw him come out of his house. Fortunately Spark is well trained around other dogs. Olga had him lie down and stay and I sat down and petted him. Terra soon decided to approach, and sniffed him, and alternated between clinging to me and sniffing around
We walked the dogs to a nearby small pond. I hadn't known that Olga had access to a pond, but I was very excited because I want Terra to enjoy playing in water. I've always wanted a water dog but my first dog was a Corgi mix and didn't want to go into water, and my two Papillons were both natural swimmers but didn't enjoy it. Chimera will play in shallow waves, at least.
Terra sniffed around and got closer to the pond. She put one foot in the water. Then two feet. Then she was standing in ankle deep water with all four feet. Yay! Much praise and excitement! Then I turned by back to talk to Olga and heard a splash. Olga said that she saw Terra get excited and just run into the water. Terra managed to swim a few feet, turn around without problem, and then ungracefully flail her way back to shore. Thank goodness, as I didn't want to have to jump into a pond to rescue a panicking 42 lb puppy.
After that she was willing to step close to the water but didn't want to put her feet in it. The downside of the critical socialization period is that bad experiences make just as much of a lasting impact as good ones do. Wish us luck in convincing her that water really IS fun.
On the bright side, after walking around to help her forget about what happened, Terra played with both Olga and me, with sticks in our hands, sticks we tossed, and just running and bouncing around. Throughout this whole adventure, she ignored Spark other than brief sniffing but did not avoid him.
She had downtime at home, then went into her crate for 4 hours while I hung out in the kitchen with a client dog. She barked intermittently (roughly 2-3 times an hour, for not longer than 2 minutes at a time). I would have preferred to ease her into crating with smaller chunks of time but it just wasn't an option with this particular dog around - he greets dogs by tackling them and that would have been traumatic for her.
More playtime in the evening before bed. She showed some interest in following a ball I rolled across the kitchen, but then she nudged a folded chair that was against the wall and it fell on her. THIS POOR PUPPY
Got more chicken wings and now ground chicken with supplements, plus her kibble.
She got more social time with the Welshie. She made a few playful gestures toward her, but then pulled away when the Welshie responded.
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