Known Knowns

German shepherds are hard dogs. I’m starting to realize that. Roland is almost seven months old, and it’s becoming apparent pretty quickly that he’s reaching adolescence. Given the hell I put my parents through during this time, I am in for quite a ride. Heh.

Roland has been coming to work with me every day since he was eight weeks old. It started just because I didn’t want to leave him home for the entire day when he was that young. So I brought his crate in, and he basically slept all day. For weeks. Every day I said I’d take him home at noon if he got squirrley. But he just slept.

And here we are, five months later. Roland’s still here. He’s about 50 pounds bigger. He doesn’t sleep all day. But he’s pretty darn good, relative to a lot of other dogs in the world. Until yesterday.

It must have been a full moon or something. Roland usually sleeps until about 11:45ish, or is at least very calm and quiet, thanks to Josh’s morning walks . Not so, yesterday. He whined incessantly. He refused to go to the bathroom. He continually tangled his leash. He barked occasionally. He dumped his water bowl out. He wouldn’t focus when I used the clicker to get him to settle. By 4:30, I was basically fried from his poor behavior. I left him in the car when I went into the fabric store, which is rare. I left him outside from 5:30 until 6:30 when we went to training class, which is also rare. I was so bent from his badness all day that I didn’t even want to deal with him. So I took him to training class at the Humane Society, hoping the class would help him focus. Wrong. He pooped on the floor. While I was stepping on his leash, he somehow wiggled free and ran to “visit” the other dogs (which would normally be okay except we have one very leash aggressive dog in there so it was pretty dangerous in this case.) By 8:00, I was done. Took the bastard home and handed him over to Josh. Luckily he had tuckered himself out enough that he immediately fell asleep with his head dangling off his dog bed. Of course, he had to go and be cute, at the very end of a long, annoying, frustrating day.

So this morning, I go to take a shower, assuming the day would be better. Josh let Roland out while I was in there. When I got out, I called him to come in and guess what? He just stared at me. (Normally he comes running as he gets a tasty, scrumptious liver treat just for coming when he’s called.) I would have gone to get him (which is what you should do when your dog doesn’t respond to its recall) but I was butt naked. Hey, it’s my house, what do you expect?

Obviously, today isn’t panning out to be any better. That’s probably an overestimate because he’s slightly calmer. Anyway.

The thing the really gets me is when people expect German Shepherds to be just like labs, or expect a young puppy to be more mature than he is. Roland is very well-behaved in the office, don’t get me wrong, and ridiculously well-socialized to both people and dogs (even our trainer has noticed all the work we’ve done in that area. She specifically pointed it out yesterday which was refreshing given the rest of the day.)

So today when someone else brought a dog to the office, which is perfectly fine with me as long as they are under control, then asked if Roland would like to meet their dog (while tied to my desk, mind you.) I said no, he gets a little rambunctious around other dogs (true; it’s his worst asset…he’s so social that he pulls me down the street trying to get to other “playmates” but I’m working on this very hard) so to prevent leash aggression and other embarrassments, we took them out to the foyer. Roland started barking (which is normal but also something I’m working on correcting; but it’s his “play with me” bark) and the other guy literally shoved him to the ground and put his hand over Roland’s muzzle and hushed him. I found this infuriating so I moved in to correct the situation. Here, this guy had asked to meet my dog, and then proceeded to discipline him for being friendly (okay, so he is slightly overzealous but it is really because he’s very, very social, not because he’s picking a fight and I am perfectly fine with him being snapped at by the other dog if that’s what it takes.) His dog is slightly older and was clearly not interested in playing. You could tell this to begin with by the way she clung to his leg and shook. Sigh. People and their dogs.

I’ve gotten totally off topic…

The reason German Shepherds are difficult dogs is several reasons:

1. People think they should act like labs (especially in Boulder where there are millions of happy labs). German Shepherds aren’t tail wagging dogs who love to approach any person they see, and who want everyone to be their friends. Roland is slightly reserved. He doesn’t approach every loony on the Pearl Street Mall and that’s just the way I like him. A well-socialized GSD is comfortable with people, but does not have the same outgoing personality of a lab or a golden. It is not because they are mean, antisocial, scared, or viscious. It is because of many years of breeding.

2. GSDs are ridiculously smart. We are working on targeting exercises right now, which means Roland has to touch a yogurt lid with his nose to get a click. (Eventually you can use this to teach the heel command, teach them to go to certain spots or away from you, or lots of other fun things like turning off the lights and shutting doors.) It’s a really fun game but he gets bored after eight or nine tries with the lid. This means that I constantly have to be upping the anti with his training. I can only do so much targeting before he starts whining. This is very typical of GSDs.

3. On that note, a border collie or any other smart working/herding dog has the ability to train for hours and hours and hours because that’s their “job.” A GSD can also develop that kind of attention span, but they will continually ask you “why”. Why do I have to touch my nose to this lid, Mom? This is SO lame. What, this is all I have to do? OK, what next? That can make training them quite difficult at times. Roland is very much like this. Once he learns something (like touching the lid with his nose) he will either do it repeatedly until you remove the stimulus, or whine like a little baby until we move onto something “harder.” Yesterday during our training class, I accidently left the lid on the ground while we were listening to Marni, and Roland laid there and smacked it with his nose until I finally had to take it away from him so he would just chill.

So to sum up the longest post known to man…

• Roland has been a pill for the last 24 hours and I’m struggling to find a way to control his behavior and challenge him.
• GSDs are difficult pets because of societal expectations.
• GSDs require lots of training; constant and continually challenging. They are ridiculously smart. Scary smart, even.
• BUT, all that aside, they are wonderful pets. Loyal until the end, beautiful creatures who are extremely sensitive and loving animals. But don’t get one if you don’t have the time to train them. Seriously.