Family bimbo and my friend

Enjoying the sweet life together

A few days ago I suddenly realised that one of my dreams in life has come true, without me really acknowledging it until now. When I was a kid, my largest pet was a mouse named Norpan. My mother was allergic to fur animals, so dog or cat was out of the question. I compensated this by basically living in the horse stable from the age of six until the late teens, when other things claimed my attention. In the stable I expressed my love for animals, by taking care of horses, cats and dogs, and whatever else was around. Also during my adult life I have been a very active animal friend. I have worked with horse training during several periods, and I have also required a thorough experience of dogs, their behaviour and training. Among other things, a good friend of mine is a dog psychologist and during a long period I spent days in and days out together with her and her dogs. I assisted her in different courses she gave, and I owe a great deal of my dog knowledge to her. However, I was never in a life situation where I had the possibility to get a dog of my own and I always felt that there was something that was lacking. Although that I frequently have been the extra mummy to numerous dogs, it will never be the same as having one of your own, because the last word on how to shape the dog is always someone else's.

Then I moved down here and within weeks we also took Goshen in to our home and I think that my own acclimatisation process laid a shadow over the fact that I all of a sudden became the #1 mummy for this wonderful dog. She was the family member that suffered the most from the separation and she was heavily burdened with stress-related skin disorders and emotional depression. Despite the vet's prognosis of a slow recovery, it did not take many weeks before she was like a brand new dog, both on the inside, as well as on the outside. Goshen is seven years old, but when we took her in she looked like seventeen! Now she is behaving like a happy-go-lucky puppy and I expect to keep her for many years to come. Today she is my dog. With a few exceptions, I am the one that feeds her, walks her, trains her and pampers her with affection, and she follows me where ever I go. I have expanded Yoram's perception of whereto you can bring your dog, and nowadays we bring her almost everywhere. In her former life she was always left at home, constituting the house alarm. That's no life for a family member.

Goshen is a pure show-line German Shepherd, which means that she is bred primarily for her looks rather than for her performance abilities and we sometimes joke about her as being the bimbo in the family. She is also a grown-up dog, who has spent years without perfect obedience, but nevertheless I have achieved great improvement in her attentiveness when we are working and Yoram has looked quite happy when he lately has asked her to heel for him. All my achievements are required without using a leash, but only clicker and positive reinforcement, and this is not what he was used to. Goshen was originally trained with old-school methods involving constant correction by checking on the choke collar and that is simply not something I approve of. Goshen is the first dog that is really my own and with her I can experiment and find consistency in my approach. The day she will not be with us any more I will be well prepared for taking a puppy and then it is time for a working-line Shepherd...

Clicker training taught her how to drive the car ;)