"Dog-ality"

A local trainer teaches a seminar on dog personality types and graciously offered this free of charge to fosters and prospective fosters of the SPCA, so I was able to use some Community time off and attend.  I found it fascinating and interesting yet also took it with a slight grain of salt, which is why I won't do any links right now. 

What was really interesting is that we took a little six question quiz to determine our personality or dogality type and then talked about how that matched up with our canine companions or fosters.  The dogality types were Dominant, Outgoing, Guarding, Supportive and submissive (intentionally lowercase)  D.O.G.S.s. then we talked about traits and physical behaviors that would help us determine what type of dog we were dealing with.  We had live models of behavior (one was a Miss M. doppelganger!) to see each type of dog in real life as well as pictures of humans and dogs displaying these characteristics.

Naturally, there are various instances and characteristics that make all of these up, so with that in mind, the two dogs that I know which I had the most trouble classifying were Ray and Glamour.  With some of the issues that have happened with Glamour it would seem to be easy to peg her, but it turns out she is a very different dog with me than she is with many others.

I figured she was Supportive.  After all, she is constantly trying to please me and is very easy to redirect with just a word.  She checks in with me a lot and she knows when I approach that if she doesn't sit, she doesn't get attention.  Supportive, right?

Last night Asia took Glamour out to the back yard.  Asia jokes a lot that the animals see her as an equal in our house, and I always say that they don't even give her that much status.  Glamour went outside with Asia and jumped right up on top of the patio table as if that was planned, hopped down and proceeded to run zoomies around the yard like it was her job.  Girlfriend had a lot of energy pent up.

"I'm ready to come in, now."

 I'm finding that Miss G pushes her boundaries and likes to test the waters but is very willing to take redirection.  It's like she really, really wants the structure of rules.  I believe she is a Dominant, after all, it just took me longer to see it and it is much clearer when looking at the situation without being in the mix. 

What was my "dogality?"  Of the six questions, I ended up with two Guarded and four Dominant. 

Shocker.