Make your walking set up extra secure this week in case fireworks go off unexpectedly. People set them off all week long, these days.
Reviews like this make my day!
🥰
Gotcha Day Anniversary
Happy Gotcha Day, Scouty!
I really dislike pack walks! The cavs got the daylights yanked out of them a few moments ago.
Dear Barthel Ct, do you need a trainer to help with enrichment and behavior? Your dog is stressed. This has been going on all morning and it's not the first time. 😢
Look at Nelly go! (Laurie is finishing off with her last client 🥲🥲😭)
Mav did so well with his game at the park! So cute 😍
Full disclosure: at the very end when we were walking out, we moved well off the path to allow another dog to move by and we were so clearly avoiding and working that the man said, “I’ll give you space, my dog’s part chow.” (Looked like a collie mix, but whatever.) I believed him, but then he proceeded to walk *straight* towards us with his dog instead of anywhere within about a 40 foot range to the side and he caused a reaction that we managed and moved away from ASAP. This was a really stupid move, because we had a St. Bernard and a Great Pyrenees and his dog would have been in trouble if an altercation happened.
I think he did it on purpose and it took a lot of self-control not to go tell him what I thought and hose him with spray shield. Had I not been in a session, I probably would’ve. It doesn’t take away from how great Mav was doing, but it reminds me why working out in the “wild” is very difficult. I really do like dogs with reactivity to go to reactivity classes when possible to get the benefit of a controlled environment.
Met a cute little muffin named Bleu today! (We’ll get to the jumpy greetings pretty soon.)
This, my friends, is going to be the dumbest video you’ve ever watched. It’s so mundane. But do you know why I’m sharing it? Because it’s also glorious! When I met LuLu she couldn’t traverse the stairs- like not even close, definitely not going to poke her nose or a paw over them. We spent painstaking sessions marking any little motion towards a step- a paw, a nose, some weight shift. (You could’ve put a whole roast turkey on the landing and she was not going to budge to get it.) She lives in a townhouse so her people were carrying her down the steps to go outside to potty every day and now she can just walk with no help.
SuperBowls is a game created by Leslie McDevitt. Her books, DVDs, and YouTube channel will have great explanations in more detail, and I will post an infographic in the comments below. This is a game where you can teach a dog a pattern moving from bowl to bowl (or object to object) to create a framework of predictability that you can then use in places or around things/people/dogs that your dog might find scary. It allows your dog to have a conversation with you - yes, I can move (around, closer) or nope, I cannot. Oscar usually thinks that strangers like me are really scary. Check out our game below. The shortest distance between us went from 25’ to about 7’ by the end of the session.
I’m back! I saw about 100 dogs walking around in Italy and only 2 were reactive to other dogs. No one there attempted to touch anyone else’s dog. Public fountains are apparently open for swimming, too-
…and how it ended with Belle!
How it started with Belle…
Lulu likes the beach! She’s so funny
Scout loves his harness 💕
