Around October we noticed that Kyrie's personality was changing, moving away from the happy-go-lucky frenetic puppy we were used to. Tina had always said that Kyrie was the more cautious type, more inclined to watch and figure things out, less like Leo who was just a rambunctious people-lover. Sure enough, Kyrie was growing up!
One of the side effects of this very alert and reactive period--some people call it a fear period, but it's really just the dog growing out of the oblivious puppy phase--was that Kyrie started to display a more aloof and sometimes outright shy nature. We didn't want to encourage the shyness, so we launched a triple-pronged socialization plan! Phase one of the plan was for me to take Kyrie to work more often, to remove her from her "safe" home environment and expose her to new people. So I took one of our extra baby gates to work, and Kyrie accompanied me a couple days a week for a few weeks in a row. During that time we did notice that she became better about meeting new people, though she was still a very submissive girl and did not like people to "loom" over her (she is much more likely to approach when they kneel down to her level) and she preferred to have me greet the people with her. When we were not encouraging my co-workers to visit, she would park herself next to my chair, just like in the picture!
At one point later on I was talking to Jessica of Strauss Haus Shiloh Shepherds, one of our excellent ISSR Licensed Breeders. She told me about her own aloof, high-energy girls. It turned out that Jessica's girls had gone through this same phase that Kyrie was going through, at the same age! I was very relieved when I found that out. Jessica encouraged us to keep working with Kyrie and said that if we continued to socialize it would all work out just fine!
Our two other socialization methods included attending a big dog show in Hutto and enrolling Kyrie in Obedience class! Read on...next up: the Hutto IABCA Show!
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