Recently Natalie went to a family for two weekends in a row, who happen to own her uncle discharged SSD Steele. I was fortunate enough to receive from them the report they handed in to SSD after the two weekends were up. The following is that report and it sounds like Natalie had a great time! :)
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Natalie is a delight. She is well behaved, attentive and very affectionate. She loves (needs) to be with you, touching you, on your lap, pasted up against you at night,etc. She is a cuddler at night in bed.
She did very well at work. She never barked, would lay down at my feet if I stopped to talk to someone and spent the day in my office chewing on bones or resting on the big dog bed.
She left us know when she needed to go out. We could leave her alone in the house without being crated and she didn’t get into anything.
She immediately bonded with Steel and us and showed no signs of stress even that first weekend we had her. No panting, excessive drinking, whining, chewing, loose bowels, nothing.
She is very playful and likes to chase balls. She loved the dog park (we went 3 times) and got along with everyone.
She did not chase our cat or eat cat poop.
She loves to train and learns fast. I was working with Steel on the Easy button and unless someone else has done this with her she picked it up faster than Steel when I added the cue.
She does hump Steel. I have not seen her do it to any other dog and it is probably a dominance thing. He could care less.
We worked on elevators, stairs, entering and exiting doors without pulling and loose leash walking. I used her head halter in public but spent a little time each evening at home going in and out of our front door without it. I also worked her without it going into the dog park. It took us a very long time to get from the car to the park because of it. This is hard for her. We also took one walk a night without it. She actually is doing 100% better on our evening walk then the first time we had her. She generally pulls only when she has to go to the bathroom and then walks fairly nicely the rest of the way. We usually walk about 2 miles.
We worked her on both sides but she prefers the left and does better on the left. I have to admit we worked left more than right because that is what I am use to with most of the other dogs.
I only had her bark once coming out of the car when she saw the neighbors on their bikes. She also barked at me when we were working on getting to the dog park entrance and because of her pulling it was taking a long time.
She showed no signs of fear at the office, church, traffic or PA Ren Faire. We went to the Ren faire on 10/10 and she was great. She was not bothered by the greyhounds, elephant, noise or costumes. She laid at our feet when we watched shows or ate. For one show, she laid in Aaron’s lap while he sat on the ground. with people all around them. The only two spots that were a little challenging was the area where they were shooting marshmallows at people. However, she had her head collar on and it wasn’t really a problem. Then a man ask to pet her and unfortunately he was wearing a rabbit skin (real) codpiece which she found very interesting and sniffed him. We had to end the greeting. She did very nice greetings. We were there about 4 ½ hours.
On Sunday we took her to church and she stayed with Steel in the pew while we took communion up front. We ate at Isaac’s and she laid by my feet and then we took her swimming at the indoor pool in Dillsburg. She loved that. Both dogs swam and retrieved for about an hour.
She still has a lot of puppy in her but as I said, she is a delight. She loves people and loves being with them.
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