As I’ve written, we’ve had ongoing training with Lola on the leash. She’s very reactive on it — lunging at dogs who bark at her from their fenced backyards, growling & barking at any dog who dares to approach her. She wasn’t like this when we first got her, but my guess is that even tho she was well socialized to humans when we first got her, and even tho she lived in a couple of homes with other dogs, she wasn’t well socialized to other dogs as a puppy. She was 10 months old when we got her.

So we’ve been working on it with her for months. It’s tiring and frustrating sometimes, and I admit sometimes I’ll take a route that I know won’t take us past many dogs just so I don’t have to manage her so much. But most of the time I’ll deliberately take her past her trouble spots. And she knows every single yard that houses dogs!

She has been much, much better recently. Except for her nemesis: the yard with the chain link fence, with several large dogs chained in the yard, all of whom sound like they’d like to eat her as we walk by. She just can’t seem to control herself at that house no matter what I do.

Until today! She started to lunge before we got to the house. I had her stop, and then walked slowly backward in front of her all the way past the house, stopping several times to click and treat her for walking nicely on the leash. And she did! No lunges at all after the first time I had her stop and sit. The same on the way back!

And now it’s time to step it up and go into phase two: I need to bring her to the hike and bike trail, where there are lots of dogs, more often. Unfortunately, that’s harder during the summer, since it gets hot so early in the morning.

It will be frustrating again, I’m sure. And I’m sure I’ll got lots of looks as I walk backwards in front of her — which actually may not be so easy there. I think the walking backwards worked for her because it allows her to focus on me. I found that I could move from that to walking sideways by her, and then to just having her walk normally with me — still click and treating several times past her trouble spots. Until I can just tell her “walk” a few times & click and treat after she’s successfully walked calmly past a trouble spot.

Someday, maybe, I’ll be able to walk them without her reacting to dogs at all.

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