Holding their Paw

[cheryl & oliver]

Is this a doodle thing??? Oliver always comes over to us and everyone else and sits and gives us his paw to hold...I have bever had a dog do this without trainging it to do it, and we, DH and I think it is the most wonderful thing. We love that he lays his head on our lap, and wants to hold hands and paw with us. Why would a trainor say this is a bad thing???...Makes no sense to me, but there is no way that I would discourage this, or turn my back on him when he does it. It makes him and us feel closer, and that is a good thing...He weighs around 62-65 lbs now, so he can't really crawl in our laps, although he tries, lol...I am just curious if this is a doodle thing, as it seems that so many of them do it...

[Camilla and Darwin]

Darwin always wants us to hold his paw too! If we let his paw go, he'll gently pick it up and set it down on our hand again, repeatedly until we hold it again. I think it's sweet!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Cheryl, I totally agree with you. I love when Fudge wants to hold my hand. I just think it is so sweet. When she did it at training class to my husband, she said it was just like jumping up on him. Fudge was trying to get him to continue petting her and I guess she thought Fudge was being bossy. Anyway, the good thing about being 52 is I don't have to do everything I am told :) Oliver is a cutie.

[Christy and Yoda]

Yoda does the same thing!

[LINDA & TEDDY]

My girl loves having her paw held too. When I am on the computer Teddy will lay on the floor and hold her paw up for me to hold. So then I sit typing with one hand while holding her paw with the other. What a goof! If I drop her paw, she will continue to reach for my hand, once we are holding hands, she falls fast asleep. Doodles are just too cute.

[susan kaput]

Aww. So nice.

[Adina P]

Rosco doesn't. Thule didn't. But our border collie did until recently. I remember early on when I knew her she would sit and offer you her paw and then if you didn't shake it she'd move it a little to remind you. She would expect you to hold it for eons!

[Ali & Sonny D.]

Sonny too. They just want to hold hands :)

[Missi]

Neither of mine do this, but it sounds so cute! I'm kinda jealous...

[susan kaput]

My little guy, Angus, a mini, does both. Really nice.

[Wendy and Eddie]

Last week when I was having a very stressful week at work, Eddie reached out his paw like he does when he wants me to hold it, but instead he hooked my arm back to him and covered my hand with both of his paws. It was not a particularly comfortable angle for my arm, so I slid my arm away, but he hooked it again and curled up with his paws on my hand. I decided I could use the sympathy, so gave in. :-)

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Our first Springer Spaniel did this and if you rubbed her leg while holding her paw she would fall asleep and even fall over.

[Lucy & AnnaBelle's Mom]

Our Sophie does this all the time. Lucy will do it occasionally. The thing about Sophie is that she does it ever so gently. I've seen dogs that would also scratch you to get you to pet them, but she is very gentle. When we go on therapy visits, people always ask her to shake and she just sort of looks at them and I'll say, "Sophie, do you wanna hold hands" and she will give them her paw and they just smile like "ahhh, she wants to hold my hand". Some of the patients will even yell across the room at one of their friends and say, "Look, Sophie is holding my hand". It is the sweetest thing. Sometimes when she just gives her paw to them before they ask, they will say "Ahh, she wants to shake" and they will shake and put the paw down. She gives it right back to them, so I explain that she wants to hold hands. If she gets tired with one paw, she will take it and put it down and give them the other one.

Our trainer did suggest to us in the beginning because she knew we wanted to do therapy work, that we not teach them tricks until after we took our therapy tests, because sometimes when you are trying to get them to do something they might start doing all their tricks instead. However, we didn't teach her this, she just did it on her own. I was very nervous during her therapy test last week that she was going to give the evaluator her paw without being asked (and that would not have been good). However, she kept all 4 feet on the floor.