As some of you may recall, Cherokee's been a rather dog-aggressive little girl. We've been working on it for a little while now, and we've had good results. No lunging, barking, or even growling at calm dogs at least, eh, 15 or more feet away. No lunging at dogs showing aggression towards her at least..maybe 30 feet away. But that's always ONE dog, a few dogs together in the past has always gotten even more intense aggression than just one..I think it's a jealousy thing..lol.
So tonight, we're going for a walk, our normal "quick route" through the park near my house, buuut there was like..a dog training class there, I guess. So I turned off to go somewhere else when I got to thinking. I have a pouch full of tasty treats, a calm dog...I'm trying this. So, against all my instincts, we walked TOWARDS this group of 20ish dogs. Not too close, I'd guess we got about 25-30 feet away before I saw Cherokee getting a little antsy, so we stopped, I asked her to sit, she complied, and I basically stuffed my dog full of tasty treats. Cherokee just sat there calmly looking at this (relatively) huge group of dogs, and took the treats gently, when just a couple months ago (maybe weeks!) she would have been lunging and snarling and acting like psycho-dog in this situation, and IF she could've taken the treats in between the snarls, I would've practically lost a hand from the roughness.
I really sort of wanted to get closer to them, but we only had the street separating us from them, and I didn't particularly want to stand in the street...plus I figured why press it...and then the clincher was this teeny chihuahua (and its owners) coming right for us from another direction, so we just turned and left.
But I just can't believe how quickly this dog is progressing. And I feel soooo stupid for not doing this forever ago! Geesh...
Just had to share...