Most everyone knows that Jäger doubles as my service and personal protection dog. We were walking through Wal-Mart yesterday when a 16-17 year old girl walked out from one of the isles, saw Jäger, screamed, and leapt several feet to hide behind a display. I'm hard of hearing and she hurt my ears with that scream, gangly arms and legs flailing, and all sorts of excitement. It was a full blown conniption fit. Fortunately, Jäger stood still, did the twisty-turny head thing that shepherds do looking at her like she was insane.

I dressed her down for moving and screaming like that near a dog. I mean if you want bit, that's what to do. Her little sister (maybe 10-12) came over (she showed great interest) so I taught her to introduce herself to dogs. He licked her face and she loved it.

I gotta say that this is a great testimonial for giving a dog a good pack structure and setting them up to succeed. I made it a point to expose Jäger to as much as possible when he was growing up. Even now if he shows fear of something I make it a point to take him over to it, I touch it (sometimes repeatedly) until he decides it's nothing. I don't reward him at all, I just calmly recognize his trepidation and lead him through it to a winning conclusion. I submit to you that leadership like this prepares the dog to react to surprises predictably. You've got to remember the dog's ability to perceive things in the world. A plastic bag or scrap of paper whirling on the breeze is nothing to you, but in the dog's brain .... Yes it's not a real threat and you're not facing down an enemy, but he doesn't know that. Twenty false alarms are worth one real item.

If the screamer wasn't enough, 2 or 3 minutes later the store started checking the fire alarms, strobe lights and klaxons going off every couple of minutes. He looked at them while we were walking, he looked up at me and decided to ignore them too. A quick scratch behind the ears and we were on our way.

Nice story. I'm happy my dog has reached this point, the more that you let your dog experience, the better in most cases.

great story.

Bravo Jäger !!! (And you too, Red, for the training )

I've done a lot of the same with Lear - every inanimate thing he looked at or sometimes barked at with suspicion, I introduced him to it. I took advantage of halloween when he was 4 months old to do the same thing (with all the weird floaty things people put in their yards).