Enter Mabel and Barbara. Annie has been so interested in them, and probably a little jealous of the attention they receive. We have been slowly introducing them to each other.
Using behavioral techniques and coaching, we have kept Annie on a leash and allowed her to get close to the girls. The girls seem mildly interested in her, and slowly move away pecking at new parts of the lawn. Then, we've let her out into the yard while the girls are in the coop and coached her not to jump on the coop. Ok so far so good.
Yesterday afternoon we let Annie out into the yard while the girls were roaming around on the lawn, coaching Annie to "be nice/no chase". This went well for about 5 minutes, and what happened next was really Barbara's fault.
Annie got a closer, but was just walking along, sniffing where the girls had been, Barbara suddenly flapped her wings and took off running. The chase was on.
Annie thought this was so much fun, and clearly saw it as a game, and perhaps someday it will be. She never tried to bite, or harm the chickens in anyway, but she did have a gleam in her eye. She loves to chase the ball, the "baby", and anything else we will toss, so a running chicken looked like a hell of a lot of fun.
When we said, well really shouted, Annie No Chase, she stopped and came right to me. Such a good girl. The chickens calmed right down and went back to cruising the yard. All was well in the Kingdom of the Chicken Wrangler, again,
By the way, chicken seem to ignore commands like "stay", "come" etc. And when they run they look just like their ancestors, T-Rex and Velocoraptor . Kinda scary. Maybe the chicken stare is some deep dinosaur engrams firing off in their little chicken brains, saying: Meal or Mama?
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