By Melissa Bowersock
Many of you may remember my hiking adventures with my Airedale, Annie, and her ultimate tragic passing. I’m guessing most of you out there know the pain of a dog-shaped hole in your heart.
Some people, when they reach that inevitable end, vow never to get another dog so they never have to know that pain again. I, however, have always believed that those weeks and months of grief are far outweighed by the years of love that dog has given me.
Ergo, enter Lily.
Lily is a soft-coated Wheaten Terrier. SCWTs are a smaller terrier, bred to be multi-talented Irish farm dogs: they kill vermin, herd sheep, and act as guard dogs.
Lily shouldn’t get much more than 30 pounds at maturity, a much easier weight to handle than Annie’s 80 pounds. If, God forbid, we should run into similar health issues again, we want to be able to carry her to wherever she needs to go.
We got Lily when she was three months old, just past the space-cadet age of puppies, and started her on the trails right away. We had an old, small harness from when Annie was a puppy, and used that on Lily, but she pulled like a sled dog on every outing.
Anyone who’s had a puppy can probably remember those days. The good news was that the harness didn’t choke her like her collar might have, but the bad news was it only had a top ring on the back, and Lily just leaned into the taut leash. Many times, I felt like she might pull my arm out of its socket. When I took her out for beginning training in heeling, I shortened the leash like a traffic lead, but Lily still pulled so much, she ended up walking on her back legs, her front legs up in the air.
I got her a new harness, one with a ring on the back and a ring on the front and attaching the leash to the front ring made a huge difference on the very first walk.
She still pulled, but not as much, and she was much more manageable. She even just walks sometimes! We make a little more progress every day, and already walks are much more enjoyable.
Lily loves the trails like Annie did. She would just go, go, go until her legs gave out if we let her. One thing we noticed immediately was that when a strange dog approached, Lily would neither rush the dog nor cower, and she wouldn’t bark; she would simply stand (or sit) and watch as the dog approached.
Once they made contact and Lily knew the dog was friendly, then she would get excited and go into hyper-play mode.
Unfortunately, she would often get so excited she would LEAP to the end of the leash and when she reached full extension, would fall over backward on the ground.
We were worried she would hurt herself, but I remembered a tip I’d read about somewhere, and we’ve started standing on the leash when a dog approaches so that Lily only has about 6-8 inches of play. This way, she can greet the dog and get excited without hurting herself.
We’re using the same technique when people approach so that Lily doesn’t jump up on them, and it’s working really well.
She’s so adorable that people always want to pet her, but without this trick, she’d be climbing their legs and arms and shredding them with her teeth and claws.
The training, of course, will go on, but Lily is already becoming a great trail dog. She’s never met a rock she couldn’t climb, and she wants to investigate EVERYthing. She’s learning about cactus without getting a snootful of stickers, so that’s progress.
She knows sit, stay, come, and leave it, and of course already knows the universal symbol for treats: a hand in a pocket. She’s a tough little scrapper and will go anywhere we want to go without complaint.
No dog could ever replace Annie, and we don’t expect Lily to, but she’s already establishing her own personality and creating her own place in our home and our hearts. We fully expect that Lily will accompany us on many adventures over many years.
