Spent a few minutes today with a small dog of the toy type (clip white coat, long on ears & tail, round head common to many toy breeds) who was quite excited at having a new person to check out -- wiggling, jumping & licking.
Occurred to me, this is a different sort of excited to the sort Jaz does. She can do the wiggling, jumping, licking thing if someone she knows and hasn't seen in a long time turns up. Normally though, it's more a "have to do things" sort of excited. Like, I let her inside and she does blockies around the living room. Like a clockwork toy -- you wind it up, put it down and it does things, then it stops until you wind it up again.
When we did obedience training, there's a release command (OK) you use to let the dog know the training session has finished. If the instructors want to explain something, they'll tell us to "release your dog".
So imagine a row of handlers, with their dogs sitting quietly beside them.
Instructor: "Release your dogs for a bit."
Handlers: OK!
Little JR in the middle of the line barks and jumps straight into the air.
I'm sure she has a spring inside her.
I think there's an alternative energy source that needs to be researched. A little treadmill attached to a battery, with a bit of roo skin or a tennis ball hanging just in front. Put a JR or similar working terrier on the treadmill and come back an hour later. Give dog skin or ball as a treat.
Dog gets to run and run and run (which is apparently the bestest thing of all to do), owner gets peace for the rest of the day and saves on their power bill.
