Setbacks and Successes

Today was a mixed bag. I decided to take Toby out for a walk around the neighborhood, to tide him over until it cooled down and I could get him out for good run. I'd just hooked him up and stepped out the front door when I saw two young boys walking a dog. Yikes. I just told Toby what a good boy he was, carefully kept myself breathing and hurried us on out the front gate. Turning him right back in and putting him in the house tends to make him go over threshold and he starts whining. Since the dog was on leash and relatively under control (they were running back and forth across the street a little crazily) I decided to try something new. And it worked. Toby did have to continually check back behind him to watch the dog, and his pace was faster than normal but not a peep. His breathing barely even changed rhythm. I was one proud mom!

We decided to take a different route and off we went. Things went relatively smooth until we had to turn for home. I'd heard one dog behind a privacy fence so decided to walk by it with the street between us. That was fine, Toby could handle that. Except... neither one of us had seen the beagle on the side we were walking, behind a picket fence. Oops. That hyped Toby up a bit, but thankfully... he's not familiar with the beagle's baying so he was more curious and surprised than anything else. He took some chicken and decided that whatever it was, it was one weird animal but not worth trouble over. We'd also managed to cross the street to buy him some more room to recover. And of course, dog number three started barking from behind a chain length fence (we were at an intersection, so as it was down the road to our right a few houses... thankfully).

That pushed him over threshold a bit. His hair went up and the more the dog barked the more stressy he became. His breathy picked up pace and he started to pace the end of the leash at a mad pull. Even after we were past and he could no longer see the dog he pulled a bit, wildly sniffing the ground and couldn't take chicken for another 30 seconds are so. Then he pulled himself back together and rejoined with me. Not bad. This is an improvement on his part... to have made it through a walk with so many 'trouble zones' without that much of a hitch. Still, I was more than ready to get him home and let him relax. Normally I wouldn't have even pushed him this far... except I couldn't do much but take the new surprise dogs (I've checked that route before and never ran into the last two dogs...) all in stride and keep going.

Of course... our walk wasn't done yet. And sure enough... we're half way down the block when one of the trouble dogs (if she got lose, there would be a fight...). She bolted and for a good few split seconds it didn't look like she was chained. I'm sure my breathing stopped here and all I could do was keep my eye on her and keep Toby moving away from danger. She hit the end of her leash just as we past a car to block Toby's view. His breathing was loud, huffing and really fast, his hackles up, and he was pacing. But within a few seconds he was already calming only to turn his head to see the dog the boys were walking behind a fence. That pushed him back over threshold (even though a calm dog standing there probably wouldn't have normally). Still... within about 20 steps into our neighbors drive way towards our back gate and he was back to being relaxed.

He recovers fast these days which I'm so thankful for. Even when he's hit with a trouble zone again and again. I didn't remember to breathe until we were safely in the backyard, but I'm still proud of him. Even throughout all of that... he never whined once. He's improved a whole heck of a lot this past year. ^_^