One of the areas where we need to work with Shelby is passing cars. When 1 or 2 cars pass her by, she stays rather calm. But when she sees several cars coming her way, she freaks out.
So today we walked with her to the soccer field near the Elementary school close to our home. The walk is about 1 mile but we have to walk along Wallace Drive and in the afternoon there is a lot of traffic going on this street.
On the way towards the school Shelby was doing fine. She stopped a few times but I got her going very easily. However, on the way back she went on strike. Several times she would just hit her 3 little breaks and she didn’t want to move. She just didn’t want to go anymore. And then at the end, she layed down on the street and didn’t want to get up. Since that happened around the traffic light, we waited for a while to see what she would do. But she just layed there in the grass. I even tried to pull her up but she just didn’t move and I dragged her through the grass.
At that time Barko, our German shepherd boy and “house nurse”, really got concerned with Shelby. (I call him our nurse since he is always concerned when someone has an injury or makes whining voices.) He jumped around her, he nibbled her in the front legs, he scratched her at her shoulders, he tried to pull her up by biting her in the neck. Shelby didn’t move. So Barko started to bark at her, run around her and try to animate her to play and get up. It was really interesting to watch how concerned he was about Shelby’s well-being.
Just 3 days ago we saw the movie “8 Below” where they talked about 8 sled dogs that were left behind in the Antarctic during a bad winter storm. 6 out of 8 dogs survived by themselves for more than 6 months until their care taker Jerry Shepard picked them up. Anyway, Max, the Husky, was a very “caring” dog. He tried to free one of the Husky’s before he passed on. At the end when Jerry, the owner found them and put 4 of them in the 4-wheeler, Max was running back and forth trying to tell Jerry that he wasn’t ready to leave. Suddenly he ran away and Jerry followed him. Not far he found Maya laying in the snow fighting for her life.
Barko would do the same thing. When Cito doesn’t feel well, Barko stays around him or sniffs his injury. When Shelby came to our home, he always sniffed her stump and stayed around her. He even sleeps in front of her crate at night.
Anyway, after Barko’s nudging, Shelby finally got up and walked home with us.
