Day 2 · Dog Training Community

Day 2

Individual work with my two dogs today. So my spaniel had a cruciate ligament injury a few months ago so has been on limited exercise since and it has felt a bit like he’s forgotten all of his training (recall very slow, acts like he’s never seen another dog before etc)

Today I took him for a walk first and focussed on loose lead walking and a bit of a mooch about the local park. As we got into the park a golden retriever lay down (I hate that) and I called Muttley off to the other direction to have a sniff. The other dog still bounded over and Muttley didn’t really have a choice but to intersect. Then another dog came charging over to join in. At this point Muttley came back to me and decided that sniffing was more interesting - so I took that as a win.

Then with my Doberman, he’s been so over-aroused just even walking around the block so today I just took some time walking around the kitchen with the lead on, opening the front door but not going outside straight away and doing some kind of lead drills in the front drive. Recently he’s been calm leaving the house but when we get to a particular point in our village he’s been whining (the dreaded Dobie whine) and barking out of over arousal. He did get attacked here when he was a puppy and people/dogs/horses/cars come from all different directions so I understand the stress. Today I tried to just be positive in my body language and just keep walking. It did seem to help a bit. Then we went to the park and had a play (trying to work on our play skills after the challenge) and then I let him carry the ball home. He holds the ball in his mouth and just squishes it and it definitely seemed to make him relax more. I did notice that when we got back to our drive he dropped the ball.

This is another difficult area for him because there are cats and a public footpath where people/dogs just suddenly appear round the corner. So I think I’m going to try and do some play sessions out there over the next few days.

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