When we arrived, I was fascinated by a display of lovely furniture that would look great in anyone's living-room.
They reminded me somewhat of the elegant crates that I posted about almost exactly two years ago, the Hardwood Hideway, in that the standard of construction looked wonderful. I heard the man say that there are no nails in these locally made Lyrebird Pet Furniture products, it's all made with clever joints - tenon joints, I think he said, but I forget the exact name of the joint he mentioned.
But as I was looking at this display, Penny tucked her tail between her legs, crouched low to the ground and headed back to the car, dragging me. I can't believe how strong she is when she's determined. I couldn't figure out what was scaring her so badly, and didn't know whether it was a sound or a smell, so I picked her up and carried her to the marquee where our flyball club was set up, hoping she would settle.
I thought it might have been the smell of the ferrets.
Or something about the reptiles.
Or the farm animals.
There were also rats, so I thought perhaps it was them. Anyway, she settled enough to have fun racing, though she stopped in the middle of her run to stare in the direction of the scary thing, before finishing her turn. (Lucky it was only a flyball disply, not a race.)
Then we headed off to have a turn at her all-time favorite thing, lure coursing.
And the scary thing was right there, so that she had to bark loudly to scare it away, and head off, tail between her legs and belly to the ground once more. I haven't got a photo, because I was too busy convincing her she still wanted a turn at the lure coursing.
And the terrifying thing?
Teensy tiny ponies! (Big compared to Penny, of course)
8 comments:
I think ponies are pretty weird to a dog that's not used to them. Jake went into super woofy playbows the first time he met a pony - not good, fortunately it was a bomb proof pony. These days he's much better round horses, ponies etc thanks to our dog walker/boarder - she lives near stables.
It was an interesting post. Our son has a ferret and Obi & Niki aren't in a good relationship with her.
Parlance, I recently heard that Diamond Creek is named after a cow (or bull) that died in the creek. Not sure it is at all accurate, I always thought it was because of the fossicking also.
Gussie, I guess it must have been the smell of the ponies, because she didn't see them till later in the day. I took her over there a few times and rewarded for quiet sitting. Here's hoping she calms down like Jake did.
Slavenka, your son is lucky! I think they are lovely creatures.
Mary, that's fascinating! I'll try to find out more.
Looks like a great day out - would have loved to been there!!
YOu know, the more I hear about the class you used to go to, the more wonderful it sounds. I'd love to go to something like that that was a mixture of agility, tricks, dancing, fly-ball, etc....the problem with the indiv dog sports is that people take them too seriously sometimes, I think, and then it gets a bit boring...surely the whole point is having fun with your dog, learning new skills & handling in diff situations? I'm always keen to try new things with Honey...really looking forward to joining a Flyball class when we come to Oz...I know it's not very "creative" either but it's a team sport and I LOVE being in a team! :-)
Hsin-Yi
Hsin-Yi, I hadn't realised until our first real competition that flyball is taken quite seriously by the top dogs and their handlers. However, it's highly unlikely that Penny and I will ever get out of level 6, so that's a good thing, as this low level is much more relaxing.
(I'll leave this comment on your own blog, also, so you see it without having to come back here.)
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