This is a story about a cowboy hat.

This goes to show a little piece of Doberman temperament....how very, very sensative and observant they are to their enviornment, how anything out of the ordinary raises a red flag to them. This is why socialization and showing them as many things as you can possibly think of is so extraordinarily important so they don't fly off the handle and get the bad rep they sometimes have. Here's an example of something I never thought of exposing Lyric to. Of course, because he has such a stable temperament, he didn't fly off the handle, but observed for a while until he was comfortable with this. It's interesting to note the difference in his temperament and my other 3 dogs. They couldn't care less about the hat and they never saw one either with the exception I think of Bonnie, my Lab. They just trust everyone and everything and figure it's just one more weird thing humans do. Whatever....LOL. But not Lyric. He questions EVERYTHING and needs to know just what is going on here.

I thought I had put my cowboy hat away a long time ago when I was through with horse shows. Well....I met a guy. He came to visit me and he was wearing a big, black cowboy hat. I thought Lyric was cool with most everything, but I guess....come to think of it, he really hasn't seen a cowboy hat. (I never socialized him to one. Who would have thunk it?)

He growled at my suitor quite menacingly but just for a few seconds. Then this macho man took off his cowboy hat and showed to Lyric. Lyric sniffed it and thought he'd get to bite it and play with it, having no further fear of it.....that is....until it went back on this dude's head. He was fine with the Cowboy and fine with the hat.....just not the cowboy wearing the hat. It took about a 1/2 hour until he was totally OK with it.

After I called my daughter to report all the details of my first visitation with this cowboy.....the warm reception he received from my dog, I decided the next order of business was to dig out my own cowboy hat out of a trunk and start wearing it every day for several days.

Thank goodness, this nice gentleman gave me a second chance and came to visit me again, this time with more favorable results. LOL.

Carrie

Oh, I see....