Seven our new Rottweiler

Our newest addition is Seven, a 4 year old Rottweiler that we adopted from King County Animal Control in Bellevue. She’s not exactly a petite dog at 105 pounds and her snorts and grunt and growls belie her girlish charm and friendliness. Here she is with her backpack full of water bottles and dog supplies ready to go for a tromp.



Our understanding of her history is that she was bred in order to sell the puppies and one day the breeder asked the neighbors to watch the dog for a week, while they were going to be out of town and they never came back. Unfortunately the neighbors also couldn’t keep Seven because they were moving to a city with a breed ban against Rottweilers. As an aside, that's a ridiculous law since a recent study showed that the most aggressive breeds are actually Dachshunds and Chihuahuas, with Jack Russell Terriers rounding out the top three. Rottweilers and Pit Bulls were average or below average in aggression towards strangers amongst the breeds shown. Apparently some people in Seattle are clamoring for breed bans, but not on aggressive breeds like Chihuahuas, but instead on Pit Bulls. Luckily some sane owners have banded together and Pasado’s Safe Haven has also gotten involved.

After recovering from her spay surgery Seven is doing well and seems to be enjoying her new home. She trained incredibly quickly to the invisible fence and gets along with one of our cats, Jasmine, who isn’t being an idiot around her. Odie still needs to learn that waiting until the dog gets close and then running away like prey is a bad idea.

Just yesterday Seven had her first class at Cascade K9. The object lesson right now is getting her “walk” under better control so she doesn’t try to run out ahead. We also need to get a bench for her to hop up on to practice “climb” at home. As always, the most important element in dog training is the humans, so we’ll try hard to be up to the challenge and we’ll report the progress we make…