Zoom's thread got me thinking....

[Laurelin]

How many of you have encountered similar situations?

I was relating breed stories to someone else on another forum who asked how energetic shelties were. They said someone had told them horror stories about how they never stopped and were insane and ocd. Anyways, I said that I found them to be rather calm dogs who were actually a bit lazy for my liking. I did warn though that my idea of 'calm' seems to be really skewed though because all of my friends think my dogs are insanely hyper.

Anyone else have this happen? My roomies would go on and on about how active Summer is, but to me she's really really an easy dog to live with. If she gets a few exercise/training sessions a day and a good hour to an hour and a half of walking she's content to hang out the rest of the time. Occasionally she gets the zoomies so I just take her outside and let her run them off for about 20 minutes. And both of them have had dogs their whole lives too. And you should see people that come into our house with all five dogs! We've had people in and out lately and the all mention how active the dogs are. Well, they are, but they really entertain themselves a lot of the time by playing with each other. Really, even Nard isn't THAT bad.

It's just interesting to me.

 

[Toller_08]

I find the Tollers to be really laid back, but people we know don't understand how I can live with such hyper dogs. While I was at my Aunt's this past summer with Dance she commented on how much more Dance seemed to enjoy her acreage over our yard and home. Dance was sleeping on the patio when she said that, and I asked her why she thought so. She replied with: "Just look at how calm and relaxed she is; isn't that unusual?". And in actuality, that is how Dance always is. She sleeps most of the day away and the only time she's ever energetic is when it's warranted (ie: when we're at the park or something). Spring as well. For some reason my Aunt, and most of my other relatives and friends, think that the Tollers are a bundle of non-stop, always on the go, annoyingly hyper energy. Of course when those particular people come to visit the dogs are excited because they haven't seen them in a while. But evenso, they are not over the top and they do have manners... but these people think they're "excited" like that all the time.

And with the Dobermans, we get just the opposite. Most people we know seem to think that Dobermans are the perfect dogs. They don't need any exercise, and apparently are complete couch potatoes. Winston is very laid back, but he's old... and even he has quite a bit of energy. Keira, on the other hand, I think is one of the most energetic, activity demanding dogs we've ever had. Needless to say, we've had to deter more than one person from thinking a Dobe may be in their future because they thought that they'd never have to exercise the dog.

 

[Zoom]

Most people look at me like I"m nuts because of Sawyer (and he's usually running around like mad at the park at the time) and they all tell me how energetic Aussies are. They are but they're not. Or at least, Sawyer has an off-switch to die for.

 

[Sweet72947]

I have a lab mix, and I've had people tell me that their friends could tell me horror stories about labs, and how they are active and chew things and insane, and that's mostly true with adolescent, untrained labs, lol. But Daisy wasn't that bad. It might have helped that we had a huge yard for her to tear around in every day. Once Daisy was two, she calmed down. Now Daisy mostly lays around, or stalks people around the kitchen hoping to get a treat. She's always ready to go play outside or take a walk when you ask though.