Two summers ago, I wrote full-on rant about loose, poorly fenced dogs who were ruining my ability to take Lilly on a decent walk in our rural neighborhood. Today, I can report: 1) I was right about the danger. 2) Things have improved. …
When we last spoke about The Scary Kitchen Window over the sink, the one that has the nerve to slide side to side when the others go up and down, I had resigned myself to never opening this window again in Lilly’s lifetime — another 10 years, give or take. Even as our customized Relaxation Protocol work continued for weeks in 2008, I’d given up on using the window as trigger/stimuli examples because it broke my heart to see Lilly flip out. Essentially, I stopped paying attention to the window at all, and so …
I took Lilly to her usual drop-in training classes with our Rock Star of a dog trainer Gigi Moss a couple times recently. Overall, they’ve gone well. Our separate work at retraining arrivals may be paying off at class in the form of a shortened warm-up time before Lilly seems relaxed. Still, we continue to practice going places, getting out of the car, and getting into Relaxation Protocol mode right away. Here is a bit more info on all accounts. …
We had a three-day setback over the weekend with the ever-illusive Coming Inside Problem that only crops up in the summertime and only in the evening. As usual, I’m unable to peg what caused Lilly to decide once again that the house was SUPER scary, but it seems to be better. Even though, get this, Tom is currently in the basement using a small jackhammer-like thing. …
After a rough week emotionally, I decided to take Lilly along to the Golden Fine Arts Festival last Saturday. She has been to this event, near her favorite city path, for several years running. And, honestly, I needed my girl that day. I needed to get out, and I needed my Lilly with me. Some days are like that. All in all, Lilly did well … despite MANY challenges. …
Since I’m on a streak of avoiding real life as much as possible healthy and completely normal coping these days, Lilly and I went to class on Wednesday … even though it was scorching hot. We hadn’t been to class in 6 weeks. It was a new park location we did not know. She did NOT do particularly well. …
We haven’t had much time for formal training lately, but Lilly and I caught up with Tom at a motorcycle swap meet Sunday morning as a little outing. Lilly did really well. …
With medical dramas — human and canine alike — coming at me from all directions these days, I feel woefully behind on our training updates from our new behavior modification plan to continue counter-conditioning Lilly’s fears and retraining a few scenarios where she ramps up her nerves. Here is a recap that I hope does some justice to our efforts so far. …
Last Saturday, we met with Jennie (our behaviorist) for a follow-up consult. We first saw her in summer 2008. I had hoped to check in earlier this year, but time and financial constraints made that impossible. So, we spent a year doing the behavior modification work that many people do in 2-3 months. We’re working on a new plan to take Lilly’s training to the next level — with an eye toward returning to agility training (and maybe possibly competing, even though we’d be the oldest novice team in history). I’ll be reporting on the various details in …
I managed to crank out a LOT of work earlier this week, which means everything sat on others’ desks come Wednesday. I do have a few revisions and new things pending, but I’m waiting on input from clients and sources. Wednesday was the first real sort-of-summer-like day we’ve had in a while, so Lilly and I loaded up and went to class. Here’s how it went. …
