The last 2 days have been very good dog days. I'm taking each dog on their own walk and really working on getting all of our little issues worked out.
Sherman has been working on heeling, attention and recalls. Both of these are fine at home (everyone's dog is perfect at home!) but we really haven't worked a lot around distractions. What more distracting than an entire neighborhood that needs peed on! I've been using treats & Go Sniff (aka Go Pee) as his reward. He gives me 10 good steps of heeling w/ attention & he gets several minutes of sniffing & peeing. (Sounds strange, but Sherman is a marking fool!) Then we do it again and he'll get a treat. We're having a blast! And...he now has an automatic sit at intersections and is sitting a lot faster when we move aside to let someone pass on the sidewalk.
Penny's continues to work on LLW and we are about 90% of the way there. I'm very proud of her. We also continue to work on her reactivity to other dogs on leash & she's doing very, very well with that. As long as they don't get too close to her, I can ask her to sit and give me attention & she does.
Lola is also doing a lot better w/ not reacting to dogs and the GL has completely stopped her pulling. Right now, I've suspended a great deal of the LLW training and am focusing on her issues on leash. Monday night we had zero issues & a truly lovely walk. Tonight, we saw 3 dogs and I was lucky to have plenty of room to move her about 75 feet away from them and ask her to sit. She did Woof once but it was a "Hey! I see you!". At the end of the walk, we did see a neighbor & her dog approaching and they were about 50 feet away. I thought they were going into their house so I asked her to sit (she did) and praised her for not freaking out (I had run out of treats), but then they made a dash across the street & ended up about 20 feet away. Lola threw a full out tantrum and I said tried to run away from them as fast as I could. She did follow & settled down quickly, but I was annoyed. I would have turned & walked away from them if I knew they were coming our way to avoid a freak out. I still can't determine if this is a frustration thing (I want you to come play with me) or an avoidance/fear thing (stay away from me). But we'll just continue to work on it.
