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Spirit is doing well with her crate training and is up to 10 minutes with her owner in sight. Her owner did mention she's having problems with taking Spirit on her walks, she tends do a lot of stops or pulls.
I took Spirit out to work on her walking in the street. She was eager to go, but as her owner has noted, once out she becomes hesitant. I have seen this before. Each time she gets out in the open she wants to duck into a nearby closed area to make herself feel more secure.
I let her sniff her front lawn and just let her use her nose to lead the way. She worked along the sidewalk and down toward the cross street.
She did a lot of stops and heavy sniffing of the ground then would raise her head, stiffen and then go back to sniffing. At one point, 3/4 of the way to the cross street she heard voices and saw a utility man and went still. I let her watch for a moment (they were a long distance off) and then patted her on the ribs and redirected her back.
It was extremely hot, she was now tired and had no interest in treats. I let he lead me back home and we ended the lesson. Her owner and I talked about medication for her generalized anxiety. Spirit is hyper alert to sounds or sights outside of her home and goes off barking a great deal. She is also tends to wind up when she becomes nervous and goes into Fool Around as a way to handle stress. I said I thought it was a good idea and suggested she speak with her vet.
She will continue work on crate behaviors and allowing Spirit to direct the walks to help her gain confidence.
What a little trooper this girl is. I need first remind you that I had a serious incident last night with Emma when out on our walk. Emma was charged by a 70 pound dog which was intent on harming her. I used my umbrella to protect her, but it left her badly shaken and even this morning I was seeing fallout from our walk the night before. So, when Coco arrived tonight I had already adjusted out route to skip that house and provide Coco with the safest route to walk in my area.
She is much more comfortable with visiting my dogs when she arrives and is no longer trying to hide, but instead exploring my home and sniffing the items in it. Lovely.
She and Dieter, my Dachshund, had a good "how ya doin'?" sniff session with a bit of "wanna play?" from Dieter. Coco didn't, but she wasn't worried by his invitation.
Max, my retired service dog, is a non-issue for Coco and she's finally comfortable with Malcolm, who tonight gave her big sloppy German Shepherd nose marks when he said his hellos and then got GSD moose (also known as spit!) smeared on her when he gave her entire head a lick. She looked a bit disgusted, but not fearful.
We do have a new area to work on, which is her resource guarding, but she's showing no real fear of my dogs any longer.
Our walk was amazing. We crossed Park road and headed for the bridge on the other side of the street from our last walk. She was unfazed by the traffic, even when a semi truck roared past, and was happily checking out all of the new smells along that side of the road. Her owner commented she's walking faster and with more confidence on their walks and they are now almost up to full speed walking, which is wonderful.
She was a bit worried by the sight of a man mowing his lawn and tried to shy away from the lawn mower, so I think on our next visit we'll bring my lawn mower out and let her sniff and explore it while it's not running.
She did great when not one, but three different children kept asking to pet the dogs. We could see the 4 to 6 year old girl waiting as we came down the street. Her family was in the yard and she stood at the curb waiting for us to come near - we crossed the street to put distance between her and the dogs and to avoid the lawn mower (number 2) that was being used. I told the girl we were training and she couldn't pet the dogs and she began bargaining - "How about the little one?" "what about the big one?" I said no each time and we never slowed or stopped, but kept going past. The parents told her she was told no and to leave the dogs alone.
Not long after that two 3 to 4 year old boys came running toward us and I put out my stop hand, which stopped them approaching and told them, "No, they are not for petting" when they asked if they could pet the dogs. They too went through the "what about the little one?" "what about the big one" and I was firm, "No, they are not for petting" and we kept going and didn't stop.
Coco is a bit worried about children, but with me and her owner keeping the children at a distance and the children stopping and not running right up to her, she never flinched and didn't show fear.
On our way back we walked the closest to traffic to date and she was perfectly calm. We have managed to make traffic in general a non-issue.
We do have to work on Leave It, Recall and not stepping off of curbs when she gets a bug up her butt to sniff something - which leave it will help with.
