I love seeing Sia's ears! This is the first time she's stayed with me when I've been able to see them. It's amazing how much you can learn about a dog in any given situation by looking at their ears. When reading a dogs' body language, it's important to take the who picture into consideration and not just one body part but it sure does help to be able to see the ears.
When she's waiting for the other dogs to round the corner, her ears are facing out and she's alert.
They would get a little floppy when she was playing and having a good time.
But when she was worried or a little bit unsure, the ears went back. I saw this a lot when she first met Chase. He can be a little loud (he's a bit of a talker) when he first meets a dog and Sia was a little unsure of him. It took her a while before her ears would stand up when she was playing with him.
Here's a good example of taking all the body language into account when trying to interpret what she's feeling. Her ears are back, like they are sometimes when she is uncomfortable. But she's being very playful with 3 month old Rosario. Sia's doing a play bough which is usually an invitation to the other dog to play which tells me that her ears are not back because she's uncomfortable but, in fact, because she is really enjoying herself.
I also like her ears because I can rub them and she melts. A lot of dogs calm down quite a bit when their ears are rubbed. I thought Sia might fall asleep when I started to rub her ears.
In all her joyfulness today she got a little nick underneath her eye. I'm not sure what happened but I suspect she caught a tooth. I laughed when I pulled up this picture and could see my reflection in her eye. But it made me think how nice it was that she is use to people handling her. So, when I cleaned up her little wound, it wasn't a big struggle to get the job done. I'll continue to clean it and give her treats when I do that so it continues to be a positive experience. It's already looking better!
We can hardly talk about ears and eyes without talking about Sia's nose. Sia loves to use her nose to explore. I try to give her a lot of outlets to do this in appropriate ways so it is easier to redirect her when she's putting her nose in places where it doesn't belong. She's a curious girl as it is, I can't imagine trying to redirect that nose if she didn't have opportunities to explore a bit.
It's a perfect little nose. Even more perfect when it's not getting her into trouble...which seems to happen less and less with age, consistency and guidance. Ahhh maturity...
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