A couple of things

I did an hour of modified CAT with my friend Grace. She sat at a picnic table and read a book and I walked to a certain distance, then would wait for Gustav to do something, then turn away, then repeat at a closer distance.

It went okay, with a few bugs. One, the park was really crowded and we kept getting distracted by far off dogs/people, etc. Two, I'm having a really hard time figuring out what "acceptable behaviors" to reinforce. Of course, the easiest is just to reinforce calmness in general for ten seconds or so, then turn away. But I also would like to eventually reinforce for friendly behaviors, like a gentle approach or soft-eyed air sniffing, or a low tail wag. I didn't see any, so I had to choose other things. I ended up reinforcing a few shake-offs, a yawn, and some turn-aways. Unfortunately, due to my lack of experience, I accidentally got Gustav in a place where he barked a few times. So I had to wait it out, then reinforce subsequent calmness. It was weird, he was just standing there with me, then he started to whine (which I've NEVER seen him do out and about before), then bark at Grace. I'm not sure exactly how to fix this since he offers such a narrow range of behaviors. My options are: go a longer distance and hope I see something even more relaxed, and assume that someday he'll offer something friendly, or cue a friendly behavior if I could teach him one that would apply to people (has anyone ever trained a low, slow tail wag?). I'll probably start off with option one and see how far I get.

The next day I brought Dottie to the dog park and tried positioning myself on a path perpendicular to the entrance. It went great. I think this approach has tons of potential for Dottie because she is actually trying to do what works, she's not out-of-her-mind hysterical. As the people on the CAT list would say, she's "operant" Gustav's feelings run a little deeper, I feel like. So Dottie quickly learned that a turn-away meant I would get her out of there. I also cued a play-bow a few times, to give an idea of something friendly she could do. I wouldn't take a look-at-me, just a look away at something else.

I went on craigslist and found some people who want to work on their dogs with me, I'll be setting up some time right after finals are over (just a few weeks now!). I hope I meet some people who are really committed and who I can feel like we're being mutually beneficial by working with one another's dogs.

Finally, I had an interesting walk with them both yesterday. We were doing some CAT in a field while some little dogs conveniently walked along a path far away. I was focusing on Dottie, since it's impossible to do both at once. Things were going well, and Dottie was definitely choosing not to bark, when the dogs broke free and came running after us! I retreated backwards, pulling my dogs while they snarled and barked and lunged and the little dogs did the same but always kept just out of range (I wouldn't want to meet Gustav either!). The woman finally caught up and apologized. This is when the best part happened: I said "no problem, these things happen." And my dogs sat and waited calmly while we had a five minute conversation! About dogs, of course. I used my semi-truthful "rescue dog" statement and we talked about all the work we do to help them. The whole time her dogs just stood calmly, and mine sat pretty as can be with occasional treats from me. Speaking of CAT, I love that the final lesson in all this was that sitting calmly makes people and dogs go away. I was really pleased with the final result.