Guardianship

I have had a revelation.

My walks with Otto consist of me being led by him and me pulling him. We have yet to find the side by side heel position that our black lab has so brilliantly mastered. Otto stops about 10 times during our 1 mile loop, sometimes he just sits down and stares. I always seem to be yanking him, tugging on him, yelling "Come on, Come on, Let's go." I attributed this bad behavior to stubbornness, dominance on his part and poor training on my part.

I was vacuuming and the vacuum caught the edge of a fringed throw. My immediate inclination was to pull back and turn the vacuum off. I got aggravated..and then like a sledgehammer on the revelation meter, it dawned on me.


The vacuum vacuums and Otto guards.

Otto views every possible occurrence as a potential threat, it is in his blood. It is his tradition. I didn't make him a guardian over me by telling him that I was afraid, it is ingrained in his blood to be on his guard 24 hours a day. When I am outside with him, he is on constant high alert code red status. This is his instinct and his nature. Fighting this reality is counter productive, it is contrary to the very reason I got him in the first place.

Maybe with a better understanding of his nature, I won't get so frustrated with behavior. Otto may or may not like me but one thing is for sure, he is incapable of acting any other way then what 5000 years of his purebred history dictates. When Otto stops in his tracks and looks around, he isn't killing time, his senses tell him that something somewhere requires his attention. It might be imaginary to me but it will stop him in his tracks until HE feels that the threat, whether real or perceived has passed. This is his nature.

I didn't grow up in a maternally protective environment, nor do I have children, so natural guardianship it's not a concept that I am familiar with. With Otto, I am just beginning to understand it.