Re: [PyrNet-L] Pyrenees Retriever?

[Jane Gill <janegill@fast.net>]

Colette & Warrick Wilson wrote:

> We have three pyrs.  Sam and Blossom have no interest in balls, frisbees or
> fetching anything except their dinner bowls.  Nikki, our youngest is very
> different.  She loves to chase balls.  Tennis balls, beach balls...you name
> it.  She jumps up to try and catch them in the air....she chases them down
> the yard....and best of all, she brings them back.
>
> Do any other list members have retrieving pyrs?
>
> Colette
>

Yep.  Her Sister Weezie!!!  (VBG)  And since Weezie's main playmate is me, I
don't think you can blame Nikki's behavior on the Pyr Sheps.  Actually, that
facet of her personality was something I really valued (Gee, I wonder why I
wanted THAT (Even BrG).  And from the day I brought her home I have been
encouraging it, on the theory "use it or lose it".  Besides chasing down balls
and toys, she has a dumbbell on a string, with the bar wrapped with yarn.  I
pull it along the ground and have her chase it and grab it and then the fun
begins.  (I have to watch her at class or she steals other dog's dumbbells).  I
have also been making sure that she sometimes has metal things to play with,
(although I discourage her love affair with stealing daddy's hammers), so that
come the day we start working on scent discrimination, she won't mind picking
up a metal object.  (Some dogs do.)  So one of her toys is one of Conrad's
metal scent articles.  (Alas, she is so cheerful about putting metal in her
mouth that she has scientifically removed all 58 metal garden markers from my
perennial beds, and I will never be able to recreate the varietal descriptions
for the daylilies and some of the bulbs.  But a small price to pay.)  A big
game is also catching Mr. Ducky 4 in the air and then giving him a very tough
time indeed.  Sometimes, alas, he gets eviscerated.  Which is why he is Mr.
Ducky 4 (Nos. 1-3 having passed on to the great stuffed toy heaven.)    But she
is developing great eye/snoot coordination.

Those games/propensities do not seem to have interfered or carried over to her
relationships with my kitties and she is gentle with them, although she
sometimes tragically tries to elicit play with them by wacking at them with her
paws, whereupon they wack her back but with their claws out.  But she really is
all Pyr:  when she was a baby all I had to do to impress upon her that the
kitties were valued members of the family was take them up in my arms and pet
them in front of her, and she instantly seemed to put them in the category of
"living creatures that you are gentle with" rather than "animated dog toys".
Weezie likes to rub her nose in their fur.  At class this past week, my
teacher's cat came sailing out of nowhere, spitting and hissing, and began
fiercely attacking Weezie's butt with her claws out.  Weezie just turned and
looked at the cat, looking rather puzzled and hurt, like "Why don't you like
me?", but didn't take any action.  A good job that the cat didn't try that on
with my sister's Afghan Hound!  (This same cat enjoys providing distractions on
the broad jump by hiding herself between the boards and sticking her paw out to
strike at the dogs as they go over.)  I surely hope this cat does have nine
lives!

Tara
Jane Gill
janegill@fast.net











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