Had a loooong chat with my friend Belinda from across the street. She had her dog with me and I had just Gustav. We were sort of behind some parked cars so I think he wasn't faced with the full-on stimulus, although he certainly knew they were there. I gave him chicken and he was tense at first but eventually just sat down and enjoyed his somewhat steady stream of hush money (chicken?). It was nice and I hope he starts to associate chatting with people with lots of wonderfulness.
Belinda was one of the very first people he lunged at way back when we started noticing a problem. She had pet him (our new dog! It was so exciting!) and then stopped petting him and backed up onto her lawn. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he barked and lunged and scared all of us. That's one of the reasons me and Justin were entertaining the idea that he was a pushy dog that didn't want petting to stop, since this was the pattern with a few other people. But I think it was really that he was too frozen and scared to do anything until the dreaded petting stopped. He's since felt emboldened.
I also brought Dottie to the park with just the two of us to play some frisbee. She is an amazing frisbee dog. Wow. I love one-on-one time with my dogs, I only get to do it every so often but it's so relaxing and easy compared to two. I feel like I'm going into battle every time I take both out by myself. When I get just one at a time, I feel like I'm walking a super awesome laid back dog. Who just can't be on the same side of the street as people/dogs.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
When George regresses, as in lately when walking around our area, I walk him alone. Take him to classes alone until we work out the anxiety. Rita one of the trainers said he's generalizing his fear so I've got to nip it asap.
ReplyDeleteI totally relate to that about one dog at a time ... I'm sure they totally relate to me being more relaxed as well... instead of hyper alert trying to scan around to see what I have to avoid next.
Right now I only walk/hike George with the rest of them 1walk a day in the evenings when I go into the bush or places where we rarely run into anyone.
It's more work but in the past has paid off.