An Experiment

I am undergoing an experiment, if you will.  Diva has gone off to live with Sarge for the week.  This leaves me Ryder here at home.  The mission?  To see how the dogs behave separately.  Ryder has never lived alone so this is a bit of a rude shift for him.  I want to see how he behaves out in public without his sister backing him up.  We were also curious to see how Diva behaved without her pack.  Diva, it seems, has been a rock star.  She walked through his downtown community passed dogs and people and didn't bat an eyelash.  Absolutely appropriate.  I was also curious if she'd play away from me and she's been a fetching fool.

What does this mean?  Well, for one thing it means my dogs read me and my stress.  For another, they're much better behaved separately.

Decisions to be made.  Keep them both?  Sell/rehome one?  I must admit it's been freakishly easy only having one dog...  sigh...

Each dog has pros and cons.

Diva - will she be trustworthy around children?  She is becoming an eager player and wanting to spend more time with me - but she'll be work still at being able to leave her loose in the yard.  She has lots of talent on stock and will be bold and confident to travel to competitions.  She's harder to train on stock.  Very, very athletic and smart little dog.

Ryder - is showing that he'd most likely be trustworthy around kids.  He has a sick and twisted amount of play drive and is very bonded.  He's soft and sensitive.  This could be a con in the competition world as he'll have to adapt to many different fields and handle strange sheep.  He's easy to train on stock and easy going around the house.  Trustworthy in the yard.  He's very athletic but takes longer to learn new commands.  Would be relatively easy to find him a high quality agility home with his traits.

Ah, hard to say.  We'll keep plugging through our week and eventually I know the answer will come to me.