The evidence mounts

Steve came over to work on his drums and Gustav wag wag wagged his tail. Then Dottie barked a few times and all of Gustav's hackles went up and he got a little tense. Further proof that Dottie affects Gustav's read of a situation. It also made me reconsider whether Dottie really does love all people, or if she is sometimes a little frightened of them. I always thought she barked out of excitement, but now I think there's a little anxiety in it too. Gustav is probably better at interpreting a fellow dog's signals than I am. Might not be a bad idea to throw her a few treats when approaching strangers as well, while I'm at it.

I brought Dottie to the dog park for her counterconditioning session. I brought her in the new band van, to test it out. I don't think she liked the van at all. By the time we got to the park, it was dark and she was acting so tense I decided to not go in at all, but just play frisbee on the outside of the park. Both dogs are more fearful in the dark. On top of that, sometimes people bring their dogs in the dark because they have bad dogs and think there will be fewer dogs. I just had a bad feeling over all, and I'm really glad I decided to take it easy. We played frisbee and walked around, but she could still see the dogs in the park. One dog took to barking at her from the fence, giving us a beautifully controlled counter conditioning opportunity. Dottie's attention is perfect, so instead I've taught her "Where's the dog?" so she can get treats for actually looking at the dog. I use a clicker since her glance is about half a second long, she would much rather look at me. I was really proud of her, we walked really close to the huge barking dog on the other side of the fence and she never barked once. I'm sure the owner of that dog was less than thrilled on our use of his dog for training, since he couldn't get him away from the fence. Oh well.

I was feeling a little down on them yesterday, due to a weird pervasive anxiety I couldn't quite shake all afternoon. It made me wonder if I spread it to Dottie, leading to the avoidance of the dog park, or if I picked it up from her. Sometimes anxiety just takes over for a little bit, I feel better today.

Dottie and I are starting Feisty Fido a week from Sunday. This is a class for leash reactive dogs. When I signed up we weren't nearly as far along as we are now, so I feel pretty confident she'll do well. Just the practice itself will do wonders, I'm sure. It was great for Gustav when we took Reactive Rover with him, I wish I had the gumption to recreate it once a week (an hour of uninterrupted practice of attention around dogs and people, all perfectly controlled not to go over his threshold, with both me and Justin and no Dottie!) I will definitely sign him up for the next one after Dottie finished Feisty Fido, it was really helpful. I heart Dog's Best Friend, they are just amazing.

No results to report on the diet change, I can't tell a difference. If anyone has ideas for a test, I'd love to hear it.