Friday 14 June 2013

Confidence.

I'm starting to feel much more relaxed about taking Tia out again. It was quite stressful for a while, but the changes I've made in handling the situations have made it much nicer for both of us. By not trying to keep her attention on me when we see another dog using the "watch" command, she's much more relaxed too (which makes sense now I've taken the time to think about it - when you're scared of something, the last thing you want to do is fix your gaze elsewhere!) and she's definitely associating seeing other dogs with lots of yummy treats now!

On our walk yesterday, she was barked at by several other dogs in peoples' front gardens and she didn't bark back at all, she was on her 6 foot lead. We walked through the graveyard and saw another dog in there and she sat nicely and happily ate her treats which is a vast improvement from the Tia of a little while ago who got so fixated on barking that she'd never have been able to relax and accept treats.

Today in the park we saw a Miniature Daschund who was off lead and quite close to us, Tia was on her longline and she was completely fine about it. I think she wanted to play really, but I'm not allowing her to be close up to any other dogs while she's on the longline.
We saw a German Shepherd a little way away, and big, fluffy, pointy eared dogs are the ones Tia is most scared of. She was quite alert when she noticed him but not so fixated that I couldn't get her attention and she relaxed very quickly.
She also spotted the Jack Russell puppy that she was a bit funny with before and as soon as she noticed it she came straight back to me and sat down for her treat which is really great that she's made the connection.

The narrow road outside our house is always a difficult one because it's unavoidable and there's few places to duck into and hide. We saw a dog on our way home from the park today and she did growl, but my boyfriend took her out this morning and said they saw two little dogs on the other side of the road and while she did lunge a bit, she didn't growl or bark so it's not all bad.

I don't ever expect her to be okay with another dog in her face while she's on lead, a lot of dogs aren't, but to be able to pass one on the other side of a narrow road without any reaction at all is a realistic goal and one that I don't think we're a million miles away from anymore. The reason it felt like nothing was improving before is because it wasn't - I can't remember who it was that said "Madness is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results." but that's where I was going wrong with trying to get her to focus solely on me. Getting a fresh perspective on it and changing our way of doing things has made a world of difference, and I'm sure the fact I now feel confident that what I'm doing is helping her can only add to that.

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