.... by both Savannah and her Momma Person:
This puppy is extremely protective of me. Case in point: she barked at my husband yesterday when he came down the back stairs and into the kitchen. I was typing at the table in the breakfast room and Savannah was in front of me, and she apparently forgot he was still in the house... and she roared at him when he walked through the kitchen and towards the back door. Yet another instance: this morning when friend Cindy was here to help clean the house, I was at that same table in the breakfast room and Cindy was upstairs... and when she came back down into the kitchen, Savannah roared and barked as if she hadn't remembered that Cindy had walked into the back door and through the kitchen and up the stairs less than an hour before that roaring erupted, scaring the heck out of both myself and Cindy.
I've been teaching Savannah to Sit! with a voice command and a hand signal... she has learned both the word 'Sit!' and the hand signal... so much so that she sits down promptly as soon as she sees my right hand go up, and now she comes into the kitchen and sits down behind me when she hears me open the glass jar that contains her treats. She doesn't even wait for the hand signal because as soon as I turn around, there she sits with a big puppy smile on her face.
Savannah likes to have a blanket to drag around the house, especially to drag on the cold tile floor of the kitchen. I found this out when she kept stealing one of the small cat blankets from the TV room. She would drag it into the middle of the floor and leave it there in a heap, then go and get one of her toys and put the toy in the center of that blanket and she would play with the toy while most of her body rested on the blanket. Did she figure out that the toy wouldn't slip or slide on the floor if it was on a soft surface? Or does she just prefer to have that bit of softness underneath her rather than the cold tile of that floor? Whatever the reason, Savannah now has a child-sized blanket to drag around with her and she hasn't bothered the cat blanket since I gave her one of her own.
The more Savannah sees people out on the road, the more she is getting used to their faces and their voices. Case in point: JAS and her daughter... we've seen them outside along the road as we all walk our dogs, and we have seen them in their truck as they're driving down the road and into town. JAS calls out to Savannah and this puppy knows her name now when someone other than myself says it and she turns around to them with that puppy smile. Her tail is still down at these times, since every little thing she sees and hears is new and therefore a challenge, but at least Savannah isn't pulling at her leash and trying to get away like she did when we first brought her home.
I spoke to my friend Janice yesterday... she lives in Clear Lake where we used to live and is a dog-lover to top all dog-lovers. I told her about Savannah's threatening barking with my husband and Cindy. I explained that I was in the breakfast room and my 40-pounds-worth of puppy fur was at my feet and she suddenly exploded with a barking roar when she saw each of them in the kitchen-- separate days, different circumstances. Janice agreed that Savannah is indeed extremely protective and isn't that what we wanted from this dog in the first place? We also discussed the possibility that Savannah's problem could have been that both my husband and Cindy were holding things in their arms as they got near the part of the kitchen where the back door is.... my husband was holding a briefcase and Cindy was holding the mop. Possibly Savannah thought they were taking things away from "her" house.
Our dog Gracie used to explode at the trash guys in Clear Lake when they carried the weekly garbage away from our driveway. ("They're stealing our trash! Look!! They're stealing our trash!"--- my husband and I would always joke about that.) My husband wasn't laughing about Savannah barking at him the other day, and certainly Cindy wasn't too comfortable with being roared at either. Janice reminded me that every blessed little thing that Savannah hears and sees is new to her, and being that she was an outside puppy for the first five months of her life, everything is not only new but different and unexpected and probably frightening as well. Patience.... she just needs our love and patience.
Our inside cat Sweet Pea has gotten so comfortable with Savannah that he will walk in front of her and all around her, without moving in super-slow-motion as he did last week. Sweet Pea has inspected all of the puppy toys in the basket, both of the pillow beds, and has sniffed the contents of the food bowl (and 'buried' it) and has even taken a sip or two from Savannah's water bowl. To her credit, Savannah is fine with all of that. She will, however, retrieve her blue monkey if Sweet Pea gets too close to it. With all of her puppy toys, that blue monkey is still her favorite. I went to the store today and looked for another one but didn't see any more on the display. I'm hoping that Walmart will re-stock the blue monkeys because I know that sooner or later, this one is going to wear out and Savannah will be devastated. (Maybe I should buy two?)
As Janice told me yesterday afternoon, every puppy is different. When you adopt puppies from a litter that has just been weaned, you don't have to worry so much about their psychological history because all they've known at that point is crawling around with a bunch of siblings and their momma. In Savannah's case, after being with her puppy family for eight weeks, then being adopted with a brother-puppy and taken to an outside kennel for three months with probably very little people-contact, and then being re-adopted by us and brought inside a house without her brother... every solitary little thing is just different and new and other-worldly, no matter how comfortable we have made her since bringing her to our home. (And believe me, we have made her comfortable to the puppy-max.)
Janice does believe, however, that Savannah may well turn out to be "my" dog, just as Gracie was always my husband's dog. Janice and her little Yorkie Babe were well-acquainted with my husband and Gracie when we all lived in the same subdivision years ago. Janice and my husband were among the morning dog-walkers in the park that was in the middle of the neighborhood... all the dogs there loved my husband and he always had a pocket filled with dog treats for each of them. Janice remembers Gracie as being head-over-heels with my husband. "That dog just tolerated you and everyone else, but Gracie was in love with your husband." And that was certainly true.
And now, the exact opposite is happening with Savannah, and I just know that my husband is not pleased at all. I'm flattered by Savannah's loyalty to me, but I really want her to like every one of our family and friends, not just 'tolerate' them. And I surely don't want her roaring at my husband or my friends if she 'forgets' they're in the house.
Well, we're all in this together... and we're all still learning. In a perfect puppy world....
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