Roko Meets Glimmer: Visit #2

Last night was Roko’s second introduction meeting with Glimmer before he comes to board and train with me. As you’ll see in the video below, Roko is possessive about his humans, he is overly excited around Glimmer, and he has very strong herding tendencies. The herding inclination is especially noticeable with his human mom, Patricia, and the youngest child; however, he exhibits a much different behavior with Giti, his human dad: he nips at Giti’s legs, jumps against him, and tries to grab hold of his legs with his paws. Giti is the only family member with whom Roko practices this kind of behavior.

Despite his excitement and intensity, in this second meeting, Roko tried very hard to pay attention to and appropriately respond to Glimmer’s signals. He wanted very badly to sniff her, and he worked really hard to calm himself so that she would allow it. When he became too intense, she let him know by moving away from him. By the end of the session, he was doing a much better job of reading her signals and trying to tone down his excitement.

Overall, Roko did better in this second meeting than I hoped he would. At best, I expected that we could at least get him a little closer to Glimmer on a pass-by. I did not expect that he could calm himself enough that she would allow any sniffing. But, it was a happy surprise, and I expect this progress to continue during his stay with me.

Roko arrives on Sunday morning. He goes into training the second he enters my home. Stay tuned; this is going to be a very interesting journey. 🙂