Whom The Gods Would Destroy, They First Made Mad

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234 – June, 2024

By Chris Robinson

While the ancient Greeks and later Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem, “Masque of Pandora” didn’t have dog owners in mind when they penned the words in the headline, they would not have been amiss if dog people had been the target. During particularly frustrating strings of failures at some performance or companion sport, several owners have related how dealing with their dogs’ sudden idiosyncrasies and trying to figure out just what demons had taken possession of their heretofore fine working dogs had driven them to the brink of battiness.

Since dogs will be dogs, even the best ones have days when they don’t much feel like getting up from their warm bed let alone running, jumping, retrieving, sorting out scents, swimming, chasing livestock, hauling a cart or on rare occasions, hunting. Given their druthers, I suspect there are times when even the most motivated dogs would rather just have a long petting session with us instead of one of the dog sports that have been designed for their “entertainment.” Some of them are not shy about letting us know their preferences. But, when there doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason to fail at whatever the dogs are being asked to do, it’s often enough to drive their owners to the edge of madness.

A Doberman owner recounted a tale of woe with her dog ‘Boss’ in agility. “Boss was never going to be a champion agility dog. His great love was Schutzhund/IPO/IGP, especially the protection work. He is a very brave dog and this activity is right down his alley. Still, he did like agility. He was working on his MX and we both had fun doing it. That is until one day at a trial. He was bouncing around the course having a great time when all of a sudden at the dogwalk, he stopped in his tracks and started shaking all over. It was instantly clear that my super-brave dog, who had been over the dogwalk a hundred times in training and at trials, had seemingly developed an instant fear of that obstacle. I was totally dumbfounded.”

Click here to read the complete article
234 – June, 2024

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