Sylvie love

I'm really proud of us. People remark on how much calmer Sylvie's become. She used to bark at everything, but now she can let strangers lean over her and pet her! I never go out without treats and clicker though, and I still have to mediate dog-greetings. The other day a tiny grey fluffy dog growled and snapped when Sylvie ran up rudely, and Sylvie seemed anxious about the dogs at the park after that. I know I could have done better, if I'd used the find-it cue and had her sniff the ground before running up I think the greeting would have been nicer. For now I've gotten her to check in with me with some very heavy eye-contact, looking pointedly from me to the dog and back (because I'm such a big slow human), which is at least enough time for me to blurt "Isyourdogfriendly?" to the human at the end of the leash. I have the utmost respect for people who say "yes, but..." because I did a lot of work to get Sylvie to that stage herself. The "don't worry, he's friendly!"-people can go kick rocks.

I've got sniffing-the-ground on cue ("find it"), and I click head turns, but if I wait to try to capture a head-turn I often just get Sylvie craning her neck at the end of the leash and bungee-ing around like a nut while the other dog gets closer and closer. I'd like to be able to use greeting the dog as the reward for "find it", instead of throwing kibble on the ground first. Then the next step would be Sylvie offering the calming signal of sniffing the ground without me giving the somewhat nonsensical cue of "find it." Does turning to look at me translate to other dogs as a head turn? I'm not sure. I'll have to observe the other dogs more closely. Currently I ask her to check in with me using "Sylvie, come!" but the kiss-kiss noise would probably be better, because sometimes she interprets the click as my permission to go sniff the dog. I need to be more consistent with using the release cue after calling her to me. And do my homework of getting it under stimulus control. That shouldn't be too hard; I just have to keep giving her treats for staying focused on me after I reward her for coming when called. And that will also help with her reliability around other kinds of distractions--squirrelly distractions and duck-duck-goosey distractions.

Because now that the adrenaline-thrill is gone from greeting dogs and strangers, I've set some new ambitious training goals. First, I want to train Sylvie to stay inside the store when I bring her to work with me. And I like to keep the door open when the weather's nice because more people come in that way. Last Saturday she did wonderfully for two nerve-wracking hours, but then ran out to sniff a yellow Lab after he walked past. (Of course I should have known better; she was so excited when he walked by.) I know she gets bored being at work all day. I get bored too. Maybe she needs more puzzle treats?

My other super-ambitious goal is to let her off-leash in the woods. Yesterday I met a group of people hanging around by the river with their retriever-dogs, who were all off leash, and I asked them how long it took them to train their dogs to be reliable. They said "Well.... if you aren't sure that she'll come back then you can always use dog biscuits." Gotcha.