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Monday, January 2, 2017

It just might be you

So, the pups were well spoiled on Christmas as usual.  Our holiday card was a huge hit.  It wasn't exactly what I wanted but it was still pretty good.


And appropriate.  Though the naughtiness here was staged.

Speaking of naughtiness, Rogue continues her leash reactivity and the husband and I have decided that we're too close to it to be able to deal effectively with training her out of it alone.  What that means is, it's probably us.  There's no shame in it.  Even the best dog trainers can be blind to how they are affecting their own dogs' behavior.  We're too close and it's often hard to observe the behavior when you're in the middle of it or at the other end of the leash.

So, we start reactive dog class this week.  In preparation, Rogue and I have walked about 8 miles over the past four days to get the edge off her activity level.  Not to tire her out.  It takes a lot more than that, but to take the edge off.  The holidays were hard on them in that our schedule was off and they were home alone a lot more than normal.  Rogue likes her routine and the changes made her crabby and she'd take it out on her siblings.


This is our favorite park.  It's 2 miles of wooded trails that allows dogs off leash.  Not all of our walks were off leash, but many of them were.  Rogue and I did three miles on leash one of the days this past weekend.  Her leash manners were starting to slide.  I'm planning on doing a lot more on leash walking with her while we're attending class.

Rogue flushes out a Zubat while Pokehunting on our walk.

I'm pretty sure a lot of our problem is that she is possessive.  For some reason, on leash, she's more possessive of me than off leash.  It's something we'll be talking about with the trainer in class, but I'm pretty sure it's me or something I'm doing.  I may give her what she wants too often or haven't made her confident enough in my ability to handle situations when she's on leash that she still feels like she has to do something.  She's still adores people but she's still having issues with other dogs.

I'm confident that class will help.  It may be that she's not ever going to be happy around other dogs on leash and that we won't be able to make her a therapy dog.  That would be a shame, but it does take a special kind of personality for that work.  We shall see.

Hope everyone has a great New Year!  I'll keep you updated on our progress at reactive dog class.