This morning we went to the beach. Although it was early, around 8:30am, there were some people there. We met one lady from Madrid with a 5 month old border collie cross puppy called Bruma (Mist). They had got her when she was 2 months old from a shepherd in the Cabrales area of Asturias. They had seen the puppies advertised and made the trip from Madrid to collect her. This was her first dog.

When Salma saw another dog she went running up stopping a few yards away and waiting to see the reaction. The puppy immediately started to play and Salma was more than happy to oblige. She was probably used to playing with the other dogs in the household but Mimi, the little mini pinscher, does not know how to play. Salma and Bruma spent a while romping around chasing each other, now one and then the other.

As we were walking back along the beach we met a girl with a 4 months old male Labrador puppy called Greg. He and Bruma immediately started to play much more vigorously and Salma was displaced a little. She kept approaching, but when she saw the energy of the play she withdrew. However, we all walked along the beach together as a group and the dogs just interacted in a polite way.

It is a pity that I didn’t manage to film the initial greetings of the two puppies which were a textbook model of polite greetings with curving and inguinal sniffing before intitiaing play.

Mimi is not keen on meeting other dogs so the puppies had an intensive master class in distance creating signals which they learned to respect as we walked along. Mimi also made progress as we walked because little by little she tolerated greater proximity.