Wahoo! We went to the park yesterday and today with my husband. Yesterday was sort of rainy so no one else was there, which was nice to just have the whole place to ourselves. Today was empty when we arrived and we ran around and played ball for quite a while. As we were winding down I heard my husband say "Uh oh, someone's here. Do you want to put their leashes on and go?". Uh, no! Maggie has been good and we can't shy away from this!
Two smallish dogs arrived and went down to the lower part of the park (we were up on the hill). Etta was quite interested in watching them. As Maggie began to tire we decided that we probably would head out. Just then a large hairy black dog came running up the hill. He had rather assertive body language and his tail came to an abrupt stillness. I was watching very carefully!
Maggie, much to my delight, even though she was quite still in her body and her wither hair was up, she approached the dog somewhat head on but then from an arc and sniffed his flank, which encouraged him to sniff her flank. And then they were off and running!!!
Etta has an odd new thing where when she sees a dog running up the hill she goes into a Border Collie stalk and drops to the ground then may or may not race at them. I don't get that, not an ounce of Border Collie in there! She does seem to want to protect Maggie and if Maggie makes any vocalization at all Etta steps in and tries to chase the other dog off. I will have to monitor that carefully. She is kind of bossy and does not need anything else to make her feel like the queen of everything!
When we were leaving we passed a loose (and large!) Malinois. He bounded at us and my husband said "Oh, this is not going to be good. Maggie will not be okay with this". I told him to relax and not to choke up on her leash (he was shortening it quickly). He relaxed as Etta met the dog first. Etta was fine with him (she likes big Shepherdy boys!) and I heard a little bit of whining from Maggie, but nothing else, no straining, no lunging, pretty collected. After the dog ran back to his owner I turned to my husband and told him he has to have a little more faith in Maggie. This was pretty cool because he always told me I over reacted! Ha!
