A friend of mine sent me a message the other day to ask if she could join us on one of our snowshoe walks with the Labradogs. She has a five-month Australian Shepherd called Rocky. Shadow met him briefly and accidentally a couple of weeks ago and just did the stiff sniff thing before I called him away, but they've not met other than that. I said that they would have to meet in a controlled manner before I agreed for them to join us.
This morning, we met up at the start of a walk just down the valley. I had Shadow on a long line and Rocky was on lead, and they walked with us following along at a good distance. Shadow was a bit concerned when they first turned up, but once we started moving, he was more interested in sniffing all the smells than in the dog in front. Once it opened up into a bit of a snow field, I popped the muzzle on Shadow and my friend let Rocky off the lead - I then asked her to walk away so we weren't standing there staring at the dogs. Rocky looked at us, but then trotted off after her, good as gold. He came over a couple of times and I let Shadow have the full extent of the line so I was as far back as possible, and they both had a good sniff, then separated. I called Shadow to me, cued him to "get up" (standing up on me) and told him he was such a good boy - this is one of his favourite things and makes him light up.
After that, we mooched along for a while, and they came together a few more times. At first, Shadow looked quite uncomfortable, so I asked my friend to call the puppy, but he eventually settled down, and I was happy to let him off the line. He behaved perfectly; Rocky was trying to get him to play, chased him a lot and barked in his face a fair bit, but Shadow just ignored him, other than a couple of very appropriate warning growls which Rocky heeded.
By the end of an hour's walk, I was happy to remove the muzzle and let Shadow dig for cones in the snow.
He was a total superstar, I'm SO proud of him!
