Tales from the paddock: Luciano and frogs
The trials and tribulations of being a 20-week-old Maremma puppy in an unusually wet Spring.
A conversation one evening in the damp Australian spring of 2022.
Luciano: rwoof ruff woof bark ruf ruff ruiiffffff!!
Me: that’s frogs. Really.
Frog chorus: peep chirp wrp BLONK
Luc: WOWOWOWWWERRRRRRRR
Me: nope, that’s a frog too. Yes it sounds like a dog bark -
Luc: wowowwowrwowr!!
Frogs: bleep BLONK BONK
Me: it’s called a pobblebonk for good reason, Luc. Hush.
Frogs: BLONK peeep cheep mipmipmip
Luc: Wrooooff.
Me: *sigh* also froggies. No doggies.
(Rinse and repeat approx a billion times, giggling)
Pieta had the same problem with frogs. She’d bark all night at a new one, or coming from a new location. I remember that one night, after some particularly good rain, a whole new chorus of frogs started up from a dam on the neighbouring property, and she barked for a solid hour because It Was In The Wrong Place Boss!!!
Luc is particularly worried about the BLONK one coming from the kitchen water garden, in which there are many taddies and remarkably few mozzies (yay!!).
In other news, the tadpole sitch at our place is EPIC.
The purpose of this little story is to demonstrate how to respond and gently redirect the barking of any Maremma (or LGD, as far as I’m aware), and puppy Maremmas in particular.
The “rinse and repeat” bit, facetious as it is, is key. This is just one tiny snippet of the conversation that went on for some hours and a good week or 10 days.
But by the end of it, Luc wasn’t bothered by frogs any more. And that’s the whole point of the exercise.
It does work … it can just take some time.
This video is not Luciano barking at frogs. He’s barking at the Noisy Friarbird, living up to its name, and in his ears basically the same thing - a new noisy threat. It took me a good 30mins and a few days of the same exercise to persuade him that this wasn’t some new terrifying beast out to eat all of us :)