Tough times for us.

I took the dogs out one morning and twice people burst out of their front doors with dogs. What bad luck. The dogs were way too close and there was nothing I could do but praise the manufacturers of the gentle leader and easy walk harness and drag everyone away. Then yesterday we had barely gotten to the end of my block when a boxer popped out from behind a fence. I just dragged the dogs right back home and canceled the walk. There was no way we could rebound from that right then. I took them on a late night walk instead, with no one in sight. Then today the UPS man dropped off a package that I was not expecting so soon and knocked on the door to alert me. The dogs went nuts. I feel like we've had some setbacks that are due purely to chance. Sad.

Today I am doing a CAT session with Tish and Gustav, then hopefully I can find some unsuspecting decoy dogs in the neighborhood to run some BAT with Dottie. Reactive Rover starts this week on Thursdays with Gustav, hopefully this will help us out of the hole we're in. Sigh. On the plus side, Dottie auto-watches everytime she hears a dog bark and Gustav has been doing tons of autowatches with people. The counterconditioning, at least, is making a little progress.

One last weird thing: recently Gustav has begun to wag his tail as strangers out of the window. Usually he goes to the window, tail held high. If the tails slowly lowers, there's no one there and he loses interest. If the tail stays high and he perks up in other ways, there's someone there and he'll either just stare them away or maybe bark if they're super close or it's a dog. Recently the tail lowers a little, then sways from side to side. I though it must be a friend, but not someone he really really loves because then the tail wag would include the butt. I looked out the window and it was a stranger across the street. What's going on? It's not the friendliest wag he's ever had, and he wags while bark/lunging at people so I know it's not always a good thing. But it's not high and fast like Dottie's when she's going to go ballistic on a dog. It's a pretty relaxed wag. Strange.