The dog learns new tricks and gets a name...sort of

This foster dog came to us with no canine skills and without even a dog's normal curiosity. He plunked himself down in a spot between the couch and the dining table and cowered for two days. On Saturday, tired of this fearful nonsense, I declared it to be "training time." I got a handful of kibble and started coaxing him up the stairs, one at a time. He would reach up as far as he could without actually moving up the steps, and grab the piece of kibble and run away. After an hour of this, he was making it up six steps to the landing. By the afternoon, I was sitting in the loft, making one whistle through my teeth, and he'd come bounding happily up the stairs for his treat. Then he'd run down again, and we played the game over and over again until the skill was learned and he would come to my whistle wherever I was in the house. I felt very smug and Dog-Whispererish.

We took a walk in the woods, where he encounted a pair of procreating box turtles on the trail. He was beside himself, would not approach, would not go around them, just flattened himself on the ground with his ears back and his tail tucked in. I finally hoisted him up and dragged him past the silly amphibeans, but he'd stop every ten feet and look back nervously--was he afraid they were chasing him?

All weekend long I called him every name I could think of. Sam, Mac, Max, Tonto, Barney, Stanley, Conrad, Zeus, and so on. The only one he pricked his ears up to and came running to was "Bounder," after our stair-stepping success. So that is what I'm calling him for the time being.

He does play with a ball and soft toys in the house--I have the carpet burns on my knees to prove it. He kicks the ball with his forepaws like a soccer player, just like a normal Malinois. He pounces on a thrown toy. We're still working on bringing it back. He hates the crate, whimpering and pawing and yipping in the night. And yesterday when I returned to work at the library for 8 hours, I came home to find that he had destroyed the foam pad bedding in the crate, chewing it to bits, instead of chewing on his toys. So I guess he's starting to get comfortable now.

This morning we took a lovely walk at about 8:30 am down to the pond. He is starting to walk with a confident step, sniff his way through the grass (getting his face all wet with morning dew), and even walked into the pond to investigate a frog. He is starting to hold his ears and tail up instead of cringing at everything.

This is going to be interesting.