(180) Skittish or Cautious?

Yesterday I shared Beeker’s aversion to the vacuum and how he hid in the hallway in order to stay away from the noise, while Max embraced it. Today it was the ironing board. When I pulled the board from the closet, Beeks backed up, ears back and turned tail leaving the hallway. Then when I began setting it up, the noise really freaked him out. He’s ears went back and again he backed away. At this point, I stopped. I called him to me, but he didn’t come, he instead tried to go around me to his comfort spot beyond where I was standing. As he was passing me I grabbed his collar and held on to him at the same time that I was holding the ironing board. He hunkered down and I couldn’t budge him. There was no way I was going to encourage him to approach the ironing board. So at this point I didn’t want to let him go and I was afraid to let the ironing board go since it would make an even louder noise hitting the ground. I began petting the board and then letting Beeker sniff my hand. I did this a few times while I talked quietly to him, wanting to alleviate his anxiety. When I let go of his collar he come forward on his own, made a quick sniff of the board and ran off to his sleeping area by my bed. Enough of that for him.


I’m thinking this is a larger issue than just a dog that is apprehensive with unfamiliar objects. I do use the ironing board and the vacuum often enough if not every day. He sees these objects and he hears them as well but continues to shy away from them. For a cattle dog he doesn’t go much out of his comfort zone. I would think that Maxie would have more issues than Beeker but that isn’t the case. Beeks really doesn’t like the rain, the loud noises of the house or small children. His comfort with “new” takes so much longer than the Newfies. I wonder if it is a common trait for Cattle dogs or if it is just a Beeker issue?

So far when I do introduce a new object to Beeker and when we take it slow he does a good job at trusting me, and once he does get the smell of the new person or object he is able to relax and accept the newness of the situation.

This is why I believe that Beeker doesn’t know the difference between animate and inanimate objects. If he knew the difference I believe he would approach them differently. I can’t imagine that his nose, which is so powerful he is able to smell time distances and other incremental variations of odors that he could not be able to smell that the inanimate objects are flat or have a different quality then the animate objects.

On the other hand I know that animals like dogs are object specific. They have a difficult if not impossible time generalizing. That is, they aren’t able to understand that one noisy household machine that doesn’t harm them, means that all household noise making machines will be harmless.

So thinking about all this and decide that Beeker is as smart as any other dog, he just needs to have new objects introduced to him a little more slowly than the Newfies do, that by his nature he needs to be wary. I mean those Cattle can really kick hard, so to error on the side of caution with everything seems to make sense.