March Progress and April Goals

Well, I have been a complete slacker in the training department. It's been two weeks now since Lok passed away and I am finally starting to get the new routine down and be able to put my full energy into training the other two.

We didn't do much in March, but we did accomplish this trick:

Ok, so Elo is still being kind of a wuss about it, but for now, I'm calling it good.

For April and beyond, I am moving obedience and tricks closer to the back burner. We have some serious b-mod work to do. I am cautiously optimistic that Jun's Clomipramine is working for her. Her reactions to people have been FAR less extreme, she seems to be able to get closer, she can take treats nicely and focus her attention back on me (follow commands, etc) after they are gone. This is big progress, if indeed it is progress and not just a fluke. It's too early to tell. However, Jun's on-leash dog reactivity issues have gotten just terrible. And she now obsesses about, fixates on, and lunges at/chases cars. These two things are currently trumping her stranger-danger in making her a PITA to live with. Luckily they are not fear-based so may be easier to fix. Attention, attention, attention, LAT, and more attention. The crappy part is, I want to work on her stranger stuff, but if there are cars around that takes all her attention. So . . . yeah.

So far planned for our summer for both dogs are walks and more walks. Loose-leash walking, attention work, and clicks for looking at various things. So exciting. But I have seen progress from both of them (major progress from Elo if you read the last blog post) so I am encouraged to soldier on.