Monday 1 March 2010

More about dogs walking on scary surfaces

As I said in my previous post, Penny seems wary when we walk along the O'Shannassy Aqueduct Trail near Warburton.

Another, new issue is the entrance to the walk. There's a lovely new gravelled carpark and entrance to the walk, where previously it was an unbotrusive gate on a hilside. And the entrance crosses an open metal grate that scared Penny at first. She made her way carefully over it when we arrived, her eagerness to start walking overcoming her timidity.

But when we returned, she remembered that it had been no fun crossing it, and sat down to think about it.



We didn't rush her and after a couple of minutes she headed across, but her tail position gives a pretty good idea of the fact that she was concentrating hard on not putting her paws between the thin metal rails.



Thanks, Berni, for all the lovely photos in this post and in the previous one! If anyone would like to see more of Berni's photography, or perhaps obtain copies of some, here is her RebdBubble website.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Wait a minute, now I can see better. We don't like holes to walk on. Penny, chill. It's okay my furiend, it's safe. You can do it again and again now :)
Twink!

parlance said...

Twink, I hope you're right and that Penny will prance happily across it if we go again soon.

Unknown said...

Honey can be a bit of a wimp on strange surfaces too. As soon as I notice any kind of wariness from her, I always make sure that I purporsefully take her back onto those surfaces to do more work on them - treat & praise for calmness & do some training on them - great way to focus the mind away from the fear! We used to have a train platform back in Auckland with metal steps up to it that made a terrible noise when you walked on them (and very slippery too in the rain) and we did lots of work on them - the commuters must have all thought we were mad!! :-)

Hsin-Yi

parlance said...

Yes, I think I might have read a post by you in the past (or maybe Amber, from Amber's Personal Diary) about going back to calmly try out scary surfaces, so I tend to do that now.