Weekly Training Update (June 12)
We finally made it to class on Sunday. We hadn’t been since the middle of March, and it showed. Lilly was relatively shut down at times. Gigi (our trainer) thought Lilly did well, considering it’d been so long and that there were so many new dogs.
Sometimes, Lilly went flat and refused to budge. Sometimes, she got obsessed with sniffing. Sometimes, she walked around, but very slowly. So, I mostly let her be and didn’t ask much … other than to be calm (not fearful). For the most part, she just hung out and ate. Here are some photos to show our progress.
When she saw the large group of dogs (many of whom we do not know), this is about as close as she wanted to get.
It took us about 15 minutes to work our way toward the group, where Lilly worked on her DOWN-STAY, using a couple of large, long-time classmates as a blockade. We figured they would intercede if any of the younger dogs headed our way.
This is Lilly saying, “Pay no attention to the girl in the bandana.”
(If you’re catching up, some of the fearful/reactive dogs in our class wear red bandanas so that others remember not to let their dogs run up or get too close. This day, we were the only ones.)
At one point, the group made their way over to a hill so that we could practice out-of-view, restrained recalls. When I took this photo below, everyone was walking behind Lilly by about 10 feet. She’s handling it fine. I know I say this a lot, but in terms of reactivity, Lilly is usually OK if the other dogs don’t pay attention to her.
When it comes to straight fear, though, she will sometimes slow down / shut down if the dogs are moving or doing something that makes her worry, even if they are minding their own business.
Of all the exercises we did (or not), I was really happy with Lilly’s recall. She went first and was MORE than happy to move away from the other dogs and to find me on the other side of the hill. I think she actually moved pretty fast too. It was hard to tell because I could not see her until she crested the hill.