So of course because Marlowe did so great in class last week, this week was like the Coonhound Agility Comedy Hour. Good thing the class is so low pressure and our trainer is such a hoot. So starting now, it's time to put the obstacles on verbal cue. Everyone else seems to have already done that but, er, no one told me I should. I know that sounds lame but in our level 1 class the trainer was so adamant that we not really say anything to the dogs, that I just figured when it was time to start using verbal cues someone would tell me. It was pretty funny though to see Marlowe planted about 2 inches in front of the tunnel opening and just staring at me blankly as I said "Tunnel! Ok! Go! Tunnel!" Yikes. 

 As I was leaving, the level 1 obedience class was letting out and the owner of the center was talking to one of the clients from that class who was wondering what breed Marlowe was. She goes, "He's a coonhound! She does agility with him!" And was just kind of like, er, yes, but only because I am completely insane.

Last night on our walk we had a close encounter of the hoofed kind (deer) and the dogs' reactions were pretty telling (and impressive). Both are very highly prey driven but the difference is that Conrad has no idea what to do when he feels that drive kick in. He freaks out. He gets all conflicted about what to do and how he's feeling and how he knows he's supposed to be behaving--I try to help him out but doing so while he's in drive is a lot just about management.  Marlowe, meanwhile, has 200 years of selective breeding plus 2 years of prior training behind him, and he knows exactly what to do. TELL EVERYONE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD! DEER! DEER! RIGHT HERE! EVERYONE LOOK! DEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRR!!!!! He doesn't freak out or lunge or have a panic attack like Conrad does sometimes. He is quite clear on what his job is and is very business-like about it. And man, let me tell you, this dog's voice is just gorgeous. I let him stand there and bay for a while and just basked in the sound. It echoed and rang and was like a bell. Amazing. So different from his much more irritating "around the house" vocalizations (the "Conrad I demand you play with me this instant" bark and the "Someone immediately let me in/out" arf).

Conrad has had some ups and downs. There was an incident last week that really bummed me out, but then like two days later he did some amazing stuff that was totally the opposite of how he'd behaved before. So....who knows. I am getting resigned that I'll never be able to truly 100% trust him to not react. All I can do is keep him safe and get him as close to 99% as I can. I'm thinking of acclimating him to a muzzle (don't worry folks, he hasn't bitten anyone, it would just be "in case", especially if he continues to have back problems and needs to be worked on by vets while in pain).

Currently his back problems have flared up again and I'm sort of wondering if that maybe contributed to last week's issues. But we can always tell when his back is hurting--he slows down, he's a lot more ginger getting up and down, and he starts choosing to lay down in the corners of rooms, so the wall supports his back. This means that I think I'll have to back off teaching him his new trick: "bow". He's been doing so well with it too and I realized that I've been so focused on his reactivity that I've forgotten to just have fun with him and do some silly shaping. I felt bad especially because at first it was like he'd forgotten how to play that game completely, but he soon picked it back up again. If I had wanted to, I could have clicked every single thing he did while he was trying to figure out how to get back to "bow" from laying down (he often laws down "sphinx style" and the bow part is just half of his process for laying down, so it took him a while to figure out that "bow" is different from just "do a sphinx down"). It was all adorable. Cross paws, cross paws the other way (that had me rolling), shuffle backwards, roll on to one hip, roll on to the other hip, put head down....stand back up, bow CLICK! (or rather DING! as we are now fully using the Clicker+ and Conrad's "click" is the dinging sound).

 
I'll have to come up with some more back-friendly trick to work on in the mean time.
 

Oh my little coonhound boy, how he continues to impress!

Monday was our first night back at agility after a two week break for the holidays (and only our second night in intermediate level). Our trainer was busily setting up a course when I arrived and I started feeling a lot of trepidation. I've set up little courses to run when we come to do our homework, but I've never had any instruction on sequencing and the bulk of what we do when we practice is working on specific obstacles. I thought, now is the moment where I completely embarrass myself.

Anyway, I put Marlowe on to his mat in a down and when our trainer called us all out to the ring I thought, hey, why not? I'll leave him there with no restraints--I know he can do it. All the other dogs had to be crated or tied while we went in to talk with the trainer and then walk the course. But Marlowe? Amazing. A perfect gentleman, laying on his mat looking like the Saddest Dog in the World. People and other dogs walking around, an over-enthusiastic golden not 10 feet away, and we were out there for a long time--almost 15 minutes. The owner of the golden was surprised to hear we'd only just graduated from beginner and had never run a course before, because she'd judged by Marlowe's behavior that we were "experts". Yeah, not so much!

Anyway, the running of said course was also not nearly as disastrous as I thought it would be.  The beginning was with a 180 jump sequence and after one misfire (as usual totally my fault) Marlowe got it down and didn't have another problem with it for the rest of the night. He flubbed the tire the first time around because it was set pretty high and he just ran right through the frame--but after that he got that one too. He was only one of two dogs who was actually doing the teeter (he's still a little remedial with it, I have to "help" by starting the teeter on it's way down). He's also one of only two dogs who did not have serious zoomie issues. The aussie actually couldn't even be started at the set start line because it was too close to where the rest of us were sitting and this boy is just so in love with other dogs, he couldn't not come over and say hi.

I'm getting a little concerned about Marlowe's contacts though and will have to start working on that immediately. Now that his speed is increasing, he's missing them on the A-frame and the dog walk (teeter not an issue since he's still hesitant with it). I do not want to get this habit reinforced, so we'll explore our options (my preference is for a running contact because he's not missing them by much, and he's not jumping off the side, but he is "bounding" off the equipment in such a way that he's leaping over the contact area). But we'll see.

Now if the danged dog would stop eating his beds, we'd be all set! 

Just a quick silly post today that has nothing at all to do with Conrad's reactivity (OMG!).

My parents got the boys an extra large dog bed for Christmas and both of them are just over the moon about it. I even rearranged the den so there was more room for it, plus the old (not nearly so cushy) bed, plus Conrad's crate (which has a fleecy crate liner in it). The dogs don't know what to do with themselves, all of a sudden there are so many attractive places to sleep that do not involve the furniture. Conrad keeps rotating. He'll spend like 5 minutes on each bed and then get up and move to the next one (though he just got up on the futon to join me, I'm sure in another 5 minutes it will be back to his crate). Marlowe just picks one and stays there for hours. He's particularly fond of the new one because he has such high exacting standards for his personal comfort. The old bed was just not squishy enough and Conrad's crate is just too Conrady.  I've had a devil of a time lately getting Marlowe to quit bugging us about getting up on the futon in the evenings but it looks like a squishy bed solved that problem right quick. Screw the futon, this bed is much softer!

 In other news, my parents also gave me a steam cleaner. I am horrified at the contents of the used water chamber. HORRIFIED. My carpets don't even look that different (they've been too dirty for too long for one steam cleaning to make that much of an impact) but believe me, dirt is being removed. Boy howdy is it ever. And hair. SO MUCH HAIR!  As per the instructions, I always vacuum before steaming, even using the Arm N Hammer pet hair removing powder (it's supposed to loosen the bonds the hair has with the carpet fibers so you can vacuum it up easier), and still the used water chamber is just collecting hair like nobody's business. It's totally gross.

 

And on a final non-dog-related note, I'm watching the Price is Right for the first time in about 2 decades and I'm definitely noting that now that Drew Carey is the host, all the contestants are stoners.
 

On our walk last night there was another opportunity for Conrad to demonstrate how far he has come. Our normal walk route takes us around a fenced ball field. I normally don't use it for off-leashing because there are signs plastered all over it saying "no dogs" and I don't want to be That Person, but other people in the neighborhood sometimes do. Not a lot, but sometimes. Anyway, as soon as we came up to the field I could see someone was in it, but I didn't see a dog. People use it to jog around, or to practice various sports, so I just assumed that's what was going on, but Conrad seemed unusually interested in the person. Normal adult-typed people doing normal adult-typed activities, especially at long distances like this normally don't bother Conrad at all so I thought that was strange.

So the dogs are sniffing (this is our Free Sniffins portion of the walk) and peeing and pooping and what not when all of a sudden this totally gorgeous to-die-for long haired GSD comes jogging by, inside the fence, in the ball field. Oh! Duh. That's what Conrad was so interested in. Anyway, the dog going by so close to us (probably no more than 10 feet) made Conrad do a "WTF!" but we just moved backwards a few feet and Conrad was able to come back to Earth and do some targeting. At the point where I almost always have them both sit and focus on me for a bit, I was still able to get him to do that. The guy in the field was running his dog through obedience and had him in a long distance down as we walked by on the other side (we go around 2 sides of the field) and Conrad was interested but fairly calm and I let him look at the other dog instead of keeping all eyes on me and he did just great.

And then, in keeping with tradition, as we were working with one trigger, another appears. Two middle school boys running and screaming at each other and mock-hitting each other in the playground. Again, Conrad was interested but was still able to respond to his attention cues and target and all that good stuff and we were able to just walk right on by with no whining and no lunging and no bad behavior at all!

 

Good Boy!
 

Since we've begun working with Conrad on his reactivity, his behavior at our front window has improved about one million percent. I hesitate to even say "improved" because that implies that there's still something left that is a problem. There isn't.  He totally ignores what is going on outside our house 95% of the time, and the other 5% he just stands there and looks but doesn't put on the big production like he used to. And I hadn't even really worked on doing anything about this, I kind of felt it was a low priority. It was just annoying that every time someone would walk by our house (in this house and the last one we lived at we had huge bay windows in the living/dining room areas) he would get up and run over to the window and put his paws on the sill and make his growly/whiny/snarly noises.

I've also noticed that his behavior while out in the back yard has settled somewhat with regards to people walking past the house. He still definitely notices and runs over to the gate, but there's a lot less barking and growling and a lot more just noting with interest and some whining. The whining is like his medium-level reaction. The barking/growling/lunging is the full-on. While I'd like to get everything down to a level of zero, getting things dialed down at least half way to just whining is an improvement. He's also whining more at other dogs and lunging less. Again, would like to get it dialed down to zero, but whining is better than having a complete freak out at them.

 Yesterday I just happened to chose a spot to stop and practice a little obedience where there was a yard with a beagle in it, which I totally didn't notice (beagle was silent! wonders may never cease!) until I went to put Conrad into a sit and he wouldn't even look at me. Then I noticed. Then the beagle noticed and started baying and racing around. THEN a cat ran out from under some bushes and went racing across the street. Can we add one more thing to this mix that Conrad reacts to? But I decided that instead of avoiding completely, we'd just move back a few yards and find the distance Conrad could work at. We did some obedience and some targeting (poor Marlowe has to be totally ignored at these times no matter how good he's being since I have to keep the level of reinforcement up so high with Conrad) and then moved forward again to where we had been and then walked past the yard, and Conrad was able to maintain his focus and keep it together. So, momentary freak out followed by excellent work once we were able to just back up for a sec and get a grip.
 

Oh man. Those dogs better be glad I love them so much or they would have been toast after last night's walk! Of course, nothing that happened was the result of malicious intent on their parts, but it was just the perfect storm of bad dog behavior. By the time we got home and the dogs went running to DH who'd just gotten home from work, I told him, "I don't want to talk to, about, or near those dogs!" And after all the work I've been doing with Conrad, I felt really demoralized.

 Let's chronicle the mistakes made.

First of all, I got home a tad later than normal and decided I'd "save time" by letting the dogs out of their areas and suiting them up and taking them directly on their walk. Our normal routine is they get to run around in the yard and blow off steam for a few minutes before our walk. You know how they say that a stitch in time saves nine? They ain't lying. These dogs were immediately from the word go hyped up and insane. I think I could have helped them work that off except for the second mishap of the evening.

Our neighbors have a large, leash aggressive, reactive as all get-out dog. Needless to say, Conrad and this dog are not friends, though they really don't see each other much at all. But it just so happens that the exact moment we were leaving our house, they were also on their porch with the dog, their dog starts flipping out, Conrad goes into alert and while I was able to regain his focus well enough to keep him from having a meltdown, I've really begun to notice that his recovery from such events is not as fast as I'd like it to be. If something bad happens on a walk, even if the way he reacts to it is controlled and not a problem, for the rest of the walk he is nervous and seems to loose half his brain. If the walk starts out well, he keeps his confidence and his confidence seems to grow as the walk goes on. But the opposite is also the case.

And because of that incident my plan to just let them have their first pees of the evening on our front lawn went out the window, and I don't let them pee on anyone else's lawn, so now we're in a race down the block to a patch of grass that does not belong to any house (it actually belongs to the organic urban farm in our neighborhood, but is outside their fenceline) and the dogs are pulling and I can't really blame them. They gotta go. Conrad is still freaked out about the neighbor dog incident and Marlowe has begun to feed off that nervous energy and they both just behaved atrociously throughout the rest of the walk. I was constantly having to stop walking because they were pulling. Marlowe does  not pull. He just doesn't. Yet here he was, pulling like a freight train. Conrad was stopping to sniff every 2 feet as his nervous displacement behavior and digging in and refusing to move.

We were almost home when the most dispiriting incident occurred. There's this one corner in our neighborhood, very close to our house, that I call the Corner of Horrors. Things are always happening on that block that freak Conrad out. There are a couple big cats that aren't afraid of dogs that live in the first couple houses on the block. There are frequently kids running around. There's a tiny little pom that gets tied out in a front yard that's the size of a postage stamp (the yard, not the pom) and has no fence so it can come right up to the sidewalk and my dogs can go right up to it. There's a couple dogs that very noisily charge their fences when we walk by. There's just a lot of nutty stuff that seems to happen there. Enough that Conrad remembers it and tends to go into alert mode when we approach the area.

So as we approached last night I heard voices, a kid among the voices, so I stopped right on the corner and had both dogs sit for treats. A woman comes out of one of the houses and walks right by us and gets in her car. The dogs remain sitting, neither even look at her, I'm happy, treats are dispensed. We continue our walk but just seconds later a little kid comes shooting out of that same house and goes running (across a street unaccompanied I'd like to add) to the car the woman just got in to, which makes it appear to the dogs as if he is running right at them. Meltdown. Conrad does not like sudden movements and he does not like people running near him, at him, or next to him. It's not something that happens that often, so I haven't had much chance to work with him on the issue yet.

Needless to say a 90 lb. dog lunging and jumping around and snarling at a young child is not really a great image. Marlowe, who doesn't actually care about kids running, jumping up and down, or pulling on his ears for that matter, started to feed off Conrad's meltdown and began barking. So now we've got one huge dog lunging and snarling and the other one barking his fool head off. The child of course, while still a good 20 feet from us, freezes. As would I. His mom prompts him (calmly which I was really impressed with) to just keep on moving, but don't run near dogs. I finally get Conrad back to planet Earth and we move on. After that, his nervous sniffing is just in high gear and now Marlowe has joined him in that endeavor. We only had two blocks to go to get home and by the end of those two blocks I'd pretty much had it with the both of them.

I felt really discouraged and demoralized. We haven't had an incident like that with Conrad in well over a month and i felt like I'd made such good progress with him. I know it's just one incident with a lot of unusual factors contributing to it, but I was pretty down about it.

Fortunately, this morning's walk went just fine. We didn't see anything strange, not even another dog. Just a herd of deer. Both dogs were well behaved and seemed to be remembering their leash manners.  

So, I decided with a gift certificate I got for my birthday to get Conrad a SENSE-ible harness.  He's my problem child. He's leash-reactive and just gets overstimulated on walks and loses his leash manners. When taking a walk with Marlowe (we take one walk a day separately, and one walk a day together), he seems to think it's a race and his manners deteriorate even more. He's never been a pull-pull-pull freight train kind of dog but when he gets overstimulated or reactive, he's hard to control because of his size. I really really really want to work on the roots of these issues. I've started a program already but it's hard being consistent since DH rarely commits to doing any kind of training. But I am currently reading Control Unleashed and also am on a waiting list for a Feisty Fido class forming in January and we're going to do this.

In the mean time, I felt like I had to get something to help him stop rehearsing these reactive behaviors and help me be able to handle him better so I can focus more on training and less on management.

 Harness arrived on Monday, and I must say I am rather impressed. He's under control, but it's more a self-control than an other-control. I'm not going to pin all his problems on this, but the fact that when we originally trained him we did so on a choker with corrections I'm sure has contributed to his present issues. That was an other-control kind of situation and he never learned self-control in a leash-walking context. The difference in his body language in the harness and what he used to look like with the choker is dramatic. With the choker, he was afraid of a correction and that kept him in line but he also would plaster his ears back and curl his mouth into a grimace. Not a relaxed dog. With the harness his mouth and eyes are soft, his ears are relaxed, his gait is peppy, his tail is held at a nice middle point with a relaxed wag. When he gets to the end of the leash, he immediately adjusts his pace and looks back at me (and I reinforce like crazy!) with a soft happy look in his eye like, "Hey you back there, how's it hangin'? Isn't this a nice walk we're on?" Not "OMG WHAT JUST HAPPENED OW OW OW I'M SORRY!"

I can definitely see how people can just rely on a device and not work on the root of the problem. It's tempting. All of a sudden his leash manners are just a complete 180 because of the harness and it's tempting to just be like, well dog, you're seven years old, I finally found something that makes you and me happy to walk with, the end. But I'm not going to do that. I've made a promise to Conrad that we're actually going to tackle the root of his problems, and we're going to do it. If it takes until the day before he goes to the bridge, that's at least one day he'll live without having to feel this overwhelming fear of the world that he currently lives with and that bubbles to the surface a few times a week.

I've got really good feelings about Control Unleashed, and the trainer who's running the Feisty Fido class was also at the same CU seminar I was at and she said she'll be incorporating several of McDevitt's ideas in to her class, so here's fingers crossed that we can get in to the class. A class situation I think will definitely have to happen at some point since a major trigger (probably THE major trigger) for Conrad is other dogs, and it's kind of hard to come by other dogs who are in a controlled environment and can take part in sequential training.
 

 I know this has been posted before and now it's my turn.

The blogs are really not the best place on this site to post looking for advice. There is not nearly as much traffic as the forums, which is where you should go if you need advice. In the forums there are a number of different sections you can post in depending on the nature of your problem.

If you post in your blog for advice you might get one reply, perhaps two. Usually zero. If you post in the forums, there's a good chance you can get upwards of 20 replies. It's a very high traffic forum with lots of really really knowledgeable members, including many dog professionals. If you have a blog, you are already able to access the forums and post with no further registration required.

First an update on Conrad's escape the other night: inspection of the fence revealed no holes and I really can't see him jumping it--it's 5 feet but not of a material that is climbable, and right on the far side of the fence is a chasm--it does not provide a good landing spot at all, he'd tumble halfway down the hill on impact. He runs up to that fence all the time but then stops dead. So I think it must be this one spot where the neighbor's privacy fence meets the side of their house. There's a huge gaping hole there that I had sort of jury-rigged a blockade for, but I think Conrad discovered how flimsy that barrier really is.  So, that will have to be repaired--DH says he has some ideas so we'll see what we can put together.

Today we went to the park and took a long hike and wound up at the dog park. It's a really nice fall day here and we had a great time, but.... The off-leash dogs. It's not so much a safety issue with my dogs, neither are aggressive at all, but it is an annoyance issue for me because the park has leash laws and I seem to be the only person who actually follows them (not like I'd let two scent hounds off leash in a city park anyway, even without leash laws). 90% of the off-leash dogs there have no business being off-leash. The owners let them run up to every other dog they see, they have no recall, it's ridiculous.

So, since I had the time and the inclination today, I decided to take the opportunity to do some training with Conrad to work on his attention and focus with distractions. Nothing distracts him like the presence of other dogs, so we stopped a ways off from this field where people (illegally) let their dogs play off-leash, pulled way off the path and started doing some work. I've got a clicker in one hand and a can of squeeze cheese in the other and my dogs are sitting and I'm giving them commands, so you'd think it would be blatantly apparent that we are working. It's very hard to work with your dog on ignoring other dogs when those other dogs keep running right up to him and getting in his face!

And that is exactly what kept happening. Dog after dog after dog was allowed to run right up to us and get all in our business. Though by "allowed" I really mean "were totally uncontrolled". And these weren't the dogs who were playing in the field--we were very far away from that action because Conrad has a hard time keeping it together if we get any closer than we were. These were dogs out for walks with their owners, their owners were right there watching what was going on, seeing us very clearly doing obedience work well off the path in the woods, and not saying boo about their dogs getting all up in our mix.  

I've also found that containing my dogs by a leash or a fence (there are two official off-leash areas in this park, one is fenced fully, the other has more of a vague suggestion of a fence) makes people assume they are aggressive or unfriendly. Twice today at the dog park because we were the only folks in the fenced area I had people ask (or state) that my dogs must not be friendly. It's not that, it's just---hounds + forest = hounds a long way away. I take them to the unfenced part too and it's been well over a year since we've had any kind of problem with it, but I just can't relax over there like I can in the fenced area. And when I've had them on leash I've had people say "Oh I thought because you had them on leash they were aggressive." Um, okay. Seriously? Because it's actually, like, the law.

So last night around 10 I let Conrad out by himself to get a last potty in before bed while I made up their next morning's Kongs. Five minutes later, I opened the door expecting to see him standing there waiting to be let back in, as per his usual attitude towards being outside by himself. But I opened the door, and no Conrad.

I called. No Conrad, not even a tinkle of his tags.

I put my shoes on and went out to the yard, expecting him to run up to me as he always does (he's such a momma's boy). But no Conrad.

Prepare to start freaking out in 3, 2, 1.... I called DH and told him I couldn't find Conrad and he came running from the TV room. Our yard is not big. We live in the city and while we have some shrubbery that sometimes the dogs hide behind, not being able to find a large dog in our yard is pretty much an impossibility.

I grabbed the dog whistle and Conrad's food bowl with some pieces of kibble in it (it's a metal bowl so the sound of kibble hitting it really carries). I just assumed there was a hole somehow in our back fence and he'd gone down into the woods so I aimed my calling and whistling that direction, but I couldn't even hear his tags tinkling from down there or footsteps in the leaves.

DH went back in the house to get the flashlight and while he was inside, I heard someone's voice a couple doors down calling to a dog. Maybe their dog, maybe Conrad, it was hard to hear what they were saying. So I go back through the house, and find DH at the front door, letting Conrad in, who is just as pleased with himself as could be. I gave him his bowl of food that I'd been rattling and quietly had a series of small heart attacks.

He was gone for maybe a total of 5 minutes, but it felt like an hour. I can't fault his recall--he came back pretty quick and without any fuss or game-playing (he used to have absolutely horrible recall and even when he did come back he'd get within like 3 feet of you and play the "can't catch me" game, so taking a minute or two to come back when he's half a block away and totally free is a huge, major improvement). He just came back to a different door than the one he went out.

I do have a hypothesis on how he got out and where, barring me finding any gaping holes in the fence upon inspection when I get home today. And it would explain why he didn't go into the woods but instead wound up around the front of the house, and also why he couldn't come back the way he went out (it's a one-way sort of egress point). So that will have to be repaired and Conrad is on lock-down for a while--no unsupervised time outside, or on the tie-down if someone can not be standing next to him watching him like a hawk.  And some remedial work for an even faster recall.

I'm going to start counting my gray hairs. Jiminy christmas.  

Slide Show!

 Checking in from Vermont and the Paw House Inn in West Rutland. We're having a great time and it's just incredibly gorgeous here. We went on a hike this morning/afternoon and just had an awesome time, despite the fact that we had intended on taking a relatively short, easy hike and took a couple wrong turns (I guess) and wound up on the Appalachian Trail scaling a mountain. Oh well. It was all just unspeakably beautiful and the dogs had a great time. We had them both on 25 foot long lines and at first it took some time for them to figure that whole deal out and stop getting tangled up and pulling and behaving fairly badly. But after mommy fell on her butt twice (it had rained the night before so all the leaves and rocks and roots were really slippery) Marlowe actually of his own accord began to watch me carefully and read my body language and if it looked like the footing was tough he'd stop walking and wait for me to catch up and then walk at heel until we got to a flatter, less slippery section of trail. It was amazing. Who knew that the best heel work I've ever gotten from him would take place on a 25 foot leash in the middle of a forest stuck to the side of a mountain in Vermont?

 Yesterday night when we got here I thought I'd made a huge mistake. I was really worried about the dogs being in the on-site kennel here. They have to share a run and I was worried they'd get into a squabble, or that Marlowe would bark his head off and disturb everyone. I literally worried myself sick and was unable to enjoy dinner, and I felt silly but I couldn't help it. As it turns out, all the other guests over breakfast this morning remarked on how quiet and chilled out they both were in the kennel when they went to spring their own dogs after their respective dinners. When we got back from dinner tonight I snuck up to the window that looks in on their run and they were both on their beds, Marlowe curled up and Conrad watching Animal Planet. Of course when I walked in they were all "OMG OMG OMG MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY!" but they can't fool me. They were totally fine in there.

 
Today is also my birthday and we looked up an old friend that I haven't heard from at all for a few year but who we realized last night lives in the area. We went over to his house to have dinner with his wife and infant son and it was just so great. Best birthday ever.
 

I think Conrad knew I was talking so highly of him yesterday as he was a total stinker on our morning walk today! Though I think it's more likely due to the fact that he did not get an evening walk yesterday because I got home late and had to take Marlowe straight to class and DH is sick (I am too now bleh).

Anyway, Marlowe did great in class last night. We worked on the teeter and he totally is in love with it (which is entirely due to the treats that seem to appear on it lol). Every time we passed the wobble board we worked on at the beginning he wanted to hop right up on it (again, treats!).  I heard our trainer telling her assistant that she loves his teeter, so yay! He's pretty unflappable so I suspect that a lot of the obstacles that some dogs have problems with due to lack of confidence he'll do fine with. We have the building reserved for an hour of practice on Thursday, which I'm looking forward to. We still need to do remedial tunnel and jump work.

I also got to polish my ribbons a little. I got to trot out my operant conditioning jargon and just impressed the pants off our trainer who asked me where I started training (at home) and how I learned all that (books!). At the end of class she told me that she'd be interested in having me as an assistant in the future so yay me. She's encouraging me to come to the Leslie McDevitt Control Unleashed seminar in two weeks, and I want to but holy wow spendy! I'll audit for at least a day, but I can't afford a working slot ($200!).  

Dogs are an expensive hobby! Anyone want to buy this totally unused label-still-attached large Outward Hound dog backpack off me so I can afford this seminar? 

I finally started doing something with my Webshots account...

The Dogs! Gallery:
http://good-times.webshots.com/album/560751988lruRpN 

Yes, there's over 100 pictures of my dogs here. Lord help us all if DH and I ever have a baby. There won't be enough bandwidth in the entire internet to support those image files! 

The leash reactivity is improving by leaps and bounds. Furthermore, and I don't know how or why this is happening, but his relationship with Marlowe also seems to be improving. And to top it all off, his back seems to be doing better on the glucosamine/chondroitin.

We had a great opportunity to work on the reactivity this morning as a large white dog who very closely resembled the white shepherds that were Conrad's absolute nemeses at our old house came towards us in the park and started really reacting in much the same way that Conrad used to. Now, in times past this would have been a huge deal for him. He doesn't react to all dogs but one category of dog guaranteed to get a reaction from him is a large dog lunging, barking and showing stress. This dog was rearing up on his hind legs, lunging, doing the whole show. Conrad was not cucumber cool, but he held it together, gave me attention when cued, we were able to take a side path with no problem and he kept four on the floor the whole time. He whined a little bit and looked back a bit after we'd walked on but this is a huge improvement. Other dogs still concern him when he's on leash, but I think finally he's beginning to get it, that I can be the grounding influence for him if he'd just pay some attention to me and we can get by whatever is scaring him and we can keep the stress to a minimum. It's like someone who's afraid of flying--they can spend the entire flight freaking out and dwelling on the fact that they are flying, or they can have a friend go with them and keep them distracted, play a board game, talk about anything but flying, keep the mood up-beat, and hopefully in time the person who's afraid of flying can come to see that really it's not that bad.

 
The relationship between Conrad and Marlowe has always been a little bit problematic. Conrad wants to play the Pack Hierarchy Game and Marlowe steadfastly refuses to play along. Marlowe does not like anyone to be the boss of him, and he doesn't want to be the boss of anyone but himself. They've always played together and generally are on friendly terms, but they are not BFFs. They don't snuggle, they don't share, they don't follow one another around, and sometimes their games turn in to minor arguments. They're more like co-workers than friends. Sometimes they may go out after work for a beer together, but mostly they just work here. So I am quite pleased to see that they seem to be much more friendly with one another lately. Conrad used to have a best doggy friend named Sammy who belonged to our next door neighbor in Maryland. These two were just in love with each other and more and more I'm seeing in Conrad and Marlowe's relationship aspects of Conrad and Sammy's friendship. No snuggling per se but lots of on the floor bitey face with loving moanings and groanings. Their play is less of the sort that can turn argumentative. Marlowe is starting to come up to our bedroom sometimes, which was always Conrad's domain that he was not really willing to share.

I don't know if that is a signal that Conrad is gaining some confidence. We'll see how it shakes out but I'm really hopeful.