Protector

Nicki's night "out?" consists of a short sniff n' stroll down some nearby service roads running alongside fields and undeveloped woods.  A line of trees and tall hedges effectively wall off the lots and docking areas on the other side.  I like walking him there because, especially at night, the area is deserted and i can let him romp off leash.  

Last night, the area was shrouded in gloom. Dim halos of light shone weakly through the low-hanging fog.  As we turned onto the first frontage road, i let Nicki off leash and he scampered onwards and off to my right as I cut across the road diagonally to catch up while he stopped to sniff. 

Suddenly, as i  got to the sidewalk, Nicki, turned around and let out a snarling bark as he charged back left from whence we had come. "Stop! Nicki!  Stop!"  I cried in a crisp commanding voice, "Halt!"  He did, nose pointed  forward and hind legs quivering taughtly.

I looked to my left and through the dim haze saw a tall skinny man in a tee-shirt, holding a bag or something in his hand.  "I just wanted to...." and the rest of what he said got muffled in the fog. He remained standing as i fixed Nicki's leash onto his collar, stroking his head and his upper chest. "Good boy, Nicki, Good boy."

As Nicki and I continued down the road, i turned around and saw the man walking off in the other direction.  I let Nicki loose again and we resumed our walk.

The man was probably a homeless person, more concerned with his own desperate needs than in correctly assessing the situation.  Even so, it takes brain power of a peculiar degree to approach someone from behind, in a dim foggy night on a solitary road. And Mr.Nicki would have none of it.

It has been a little over a year since i took Nicki in. At  first, he was such a basket case it was not clear i could keep him.  He cringed when i first approached him in his shelter cage; and, even though i sat with him for an hour or so on successive days during the week, he was still distrustful.  

He had been in the shelter over a month and it was clear that with each passing day he was deteriorating further. And yet, when he was led to my jeep, he followed the handler with the listless resignation of a prisoner who  preferred the security of the cage he knew.

He wasn't any more at ease in his new "cage" at home. He found a place to huddle and watch.  When it came time to leave, he would hold back at the door.  He came along if yanked on his leash but i quickly realized that doing so would only ingrain that procedure in his mind.  So one of the first things we worked on was having him follow freely and voluntarily -- as in: "Komm Nicki, komm... komm Nicki, komm, komm, komm.... GODDAMIT COME ALONG ALREADY!!!

I realized that he had been abused -- and not just "neglected" as the pound-people said -- when he freaked on seeing me grab hold of my walking stick.  So another thing we worked on in those first days was "stick therapy". 

For all that, Nicki was completely at ease and rambunctiously happy around other doggies.  On one of our first outings in Cornwall Park, he met up with a setter bitch and the two of them walzed around the green joyously for loops on end.

Well...OK, it's actually a Polka

It was humans he feared, including me; fear mixed with separation anxiety.  But between the two he wanted to trust.  This provided something to work with and he gave me a visible measure of his trust-level. On our first trail walk, i kept him on his lead.  On the second, i let him off and he stayed close.  On the third, he wandered forward about seven yards and then returned.  With each successive walk he wandered further away before looping back.  

Now, he scampers off only to look back and wait for me to catch up.  At the same time, whether he's up ahead or lost in the  bushes, a low whistle from me is enough to bring him running back... provided, at least, he hasn't found some irresistibly yucky thing to scarf down.

Other humans remain problematic. Very gradually, his flight-fight response and his wild "circling indian" routine has diminished, although context has a lot to do with it.  He's more at ease with other humans whom other doggies are trusting at the park. Less so with unaccompanied men on the street, still less with squealing kids on bikes and not at all with shadowy looking Siks, wearing strange things on their heads and reeking of nicotine. 

So, it was not entirely clear to me that Nicki's Snarl last night was not part of his usual fight-flight response to some unexpected stranger appearing out of nowhere.  However, there's a difference between the "panic button" and the "danger button".  Dogs, no less than humans, have to assess a situation and we both do so on the basis of associated patterns. In thinking it over, it seems fairly evident to me that the directed intensity of Nicki's bark and his fixed, tense stance bespoke an assessment of danger and a reflex-response to protect.