Man, you wouldn’t believe what a good dog Ruby is.
Seriously, she’s just naturally a good little dog, and all Joel and I can do is add a little polish. She’s friendly, fairly respectful of the cats, and amazingly mellow. She’s amenable to instruction and is picking up the basics of obedience pretty quickly. She’s got “sit,” “down,” and “come here” down solid. “Stay” is pretty tough for her, but she’s starting to get it. “No” freezes her mid-whatever-she’s-doing, and “drop it” is beginning to yeild results, though she doesn’t get into stuff very often.
For whatever her ancestry might be (Australian Shepherd is the leading guess, followed closely by Collie, plus she probably has some Labrador or similar contributing to her webbed toes) she’s surprisingly chill. People often think of Aussies as being complete nutbirds, hyper, nippy, and a little neurotic (I confess to having thought of them in such terms). Ruby has proven me wrong; I was expecting a dog who had a major hyper streak. She has plenty of energy, but she’s not one of those buzzbuzzbuzz crazy-busy pups.
While Ruby does have a herding instinct, and does like to romp and play, she behaves herself indoors and has learned not to pester the cats. She’s very steady tempered, unfazed by children, strangers, or loud noises. She’s not so sure about hyperactive small dogs. They kind of blow her mind, and when her mind is blown, she will sit there and bark (very LOUDLY, I might add) until I drag her away.
She’s teething; shedding out puppy teeth and growing permanent teeth, and she’s been very good about gnawing only her toys indoors, though she goes for every twig, stick, and bit of scrap lumber she can pounce upon outdoors. I’ve become adept at removing contraband from her, as I don’t want her to end up stuffed with sawdust from her beaver-like gnawings.
She still has a desire to nip when she’s “herding,” but she’s developed a soft-mouth approach which is reasonably acceptable. She’ll kind of put a fang on you, but not bite down. It’s still a bit unnerving, but she’s very good about not actually biting. I’m working on training her to just prod with her nose when she’s in herding mode.
On the whole, though, she just likes to hang with her people. She’s a champion walk-taker because she wants to follow me around anyway. Inside the house, she often naps near wherever one of us is doing something.
I feel incredibly lucky that she showed up on Joel’s back step last month and I’m glad we were both such pushovers and decided to keep her. She’s an awesome dog and we couldn’t possibly have done better if we had deliberately set out looking to adopt a pup.
Excellent, excellent, excellent.
I just think she’s one of the best-looking dogs I’ve ever seen, and to hear she’s every bit as wonderful as she looks is great. Congratulations to you all for finding one another.