I've been working a lot with all three dogs but haven't blogged in a while...life has been a little crazy between school, graduation, vacation and some family drama. I'm glad that's all behind me!
Peach had an enormous victory yesterday. I've continued to take her out to new locations and play Look at That any time she looks at a new object that frightens her or looks at a person (which also scares her). She's been getting better; she gets out of the car very excited to train and get some treats from the food tube, and she's also beginning to ignore environmental stimuli in favor of offering eye contact and downs. She seems to be better with repeated exposures to the same environment, and she's also getting better in novel environments as well.
Yesterday, I had to mail a package so I took her to the post office with me. After I came back outside to get her, I got her out of the car and took her over to the sidewalk and begin clicking and treating her for looking at stuff, and she wasn't too interested...she wanted to offer behaviors and play with me! I also noticed I was seeing a lot less of her lifted paw, which she does when she's very stressed.
Within two minutes of the start of our session, someone shows up in a old piece-of-crap Explorer and manages to set off his car alarm while we're standing directly in front of the car! ARGH!! (why the guy needed a car alarm on that car, I'll never know) I just squeezed the food tube right into her mouth while it was going off, and kept squeezing until it stopped (it went on for at least 20 seconds).
Normally, this sort of thing would have flattened Peach and rendered her unresponsive and unwilling to eat...and she was scared (tail down, hunkered down). BUT, she kept eating, and after the alarm stopped, she rebounded. Amazing! This was definitely an improvement, one I hadn't seen before.
But I haven't even gotten to the good part yet. About 5 minutes into our session, a woman started walking toward us saying, "Oh, what a cute Scottie!" In the past, Peach would have barked, flattened and backed away; she loves and adores people who visit our house, but is scared of them in public. As soon as the woman spoke to Peach, she ran out and hit the end of her leash, tail wagging!!! I was so shocked that I dumped a pile of turkey dogs in front of her so she could eat them and I think I scared the woman trying to say hi. ;-)
Peach was all wiggles and wanted to be petted, so I gave the woman some turkey dogs to feed her and she snarfed them right out of her hand. I was so amazed, I almost started to cry. We've never been anywhere near this close to greeting a stranger in public, and I think Peach has made the connection that the people she likes in our home are the same creatures she sees when we're out in public, not scary aliens.
While the woman was talking to us and I was feeding Peach, a man came out of the post office and walked very close to us. Peach left the woman momentarily and wagged and wiggled at his feet!!! I marked it with praise (clicker was temporarily out of commission since I was out of hands) and fed her some more turkey dogs.
I was so proud of her yesterday...she's been making steady progress, but I thought that lightbulb moment was still a long way off. I can't wait to see what else she has in store for me! I have her entered in her first rally trial this Friday, which I think is going to be mighty interesting...
