Social skills

I'm not sure what to say about Trooper. I took him to meet two willing (and potentially tasty) friends to see how he would react. On the drive into Charlottesville he was close to me the entire time, either laying with his front legs and head between the front seats, or standing there with head and front feet too far forward, trying to move in on me. He's clearly fine with me and he is with Clay as well, even though they've had limited time together.

He took the opportunity to bark at any pedestrian he saw as we were driving through town and he did the same when I took him out of the car in the parking lot. When we met the two test-bait subjects, he tried his best ferocious shepherd act, hackles up, using his big in-your-face bark.

But these two ladies were not intimidated by him and that confused his little shepherd brain. If his tough guy act fails, he doesn't have anything to fall back on so he figures he might as well be friendly. He sniffed them, walked around, and then came back to sit down next to me when we blocked his attempts to open the door and leave. It's as if he realized that his attempt to handle the situation failed, so he would have to rely on me. That's not really a bad thing, we just need to get him to rely on me in the first instance rather than trying his own, self-taught, approach.

We left, made a couple stops on the way home, and he continued to bark at people from the car, but not at every opportunity. He probably just needs to get out more. The problem is, he's going to make a bad impression when meeting potential adopters and particularly at adoption events. We will have to stand off at a distance and just meet volunteers until he's ready for the public. That's fine, I've done that before, and I think he will come around fairly quickly once realizes that everyone else is having fun. But, looking at the calendar of events and my own schedule in May, I don't know when we are going to be able to make that happen.