We took advantage of the patches of nice weather today and took our show on the road. Practicing greetings, attention work, self control, and leash skills while we are out on the town helps Sia to generalize her skills and work through distractions.
It takes several minutes when we get to some place new for Sia to focus. Everything new has her interest and she's sometimes slightly anxious about the new surroundings. At that point, if I can, we stop moving and just work on attention with her. Adding movement in a distracting situation is frequently much harder for dogs so sitting still and giving her something easy to do (like sitting or giving me eye contact) will help her gain some focus. Notice that I also used a Gentle Leader in such a high distraction environment. I used that and a shorter leash. She doesn't need a lot of leash if she is walking next to me and, if I give her too much leash, it's too easy for her to self reward by interacting with things in her environment.
We tried going to a quiet restaurant. Portland is pretty dog friendly so there are several places that allow dogs in their outdoor seating.
A little trick I use when I'm trying to get a dog to settle in a sit or a down is to put my foot on the leash. This allows me to do other things with my hands and keep Sia in position. Sia had a hard time relaxing in this environment so we made it a very short visit. It's important to be able to abort the mission if she's not feeling comfortable and that small amount of time we were there will hopefully help her to be more comfortable next time she is out and about.
A quiet day in a pet supply store was a perfect opportunity to practice some good greetings, loose leash walking, and attention work. As she is growing bigger, it becomes more important for Sia to be the one to do the work when in environments like this. She will soon be too big to try to physically manage but, if she's doing all the work, it is little to no effort to take her places.
She did great with her greetings and melted a bit with some of them. This kind of behavior is much preferred to jumping on people. And, of course, everyone just fell in love with her.
And, after all that hard work and taking us a little bit out of our comfort zone, it was time to play in the sun. Finding that nice balance between work and play makes a huge difference for the dog and our relationship with the dog. Not to mention what the sunshine does for us...
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