Humble 2

Hi Kaye,

that is very helpful. Thank you! I do agree, I did certainly slip into the 'he knows this now' mentality. He has been very good on the lead in even more challenging environments, like on the dog beach at Sunshine, but not with serious teenage hormones in the mix. Being good doesn't mean being established.

I made a very big and fundamental error in that I was treating him like a trained dog. I didn't take him to the Lake for a training session, I took him to accompany me. I have been pretty sick with the Ross River Fever and haven't had any income for 7 months. On that day I was feeling pretty tragic. I wanted a quiet spacious place to lick my wounds. It would have been a good day to leave him home.

I know much more about the fragility of his confidence now. This has been the first significant challenge.

Informal walking with an 'informal cue', still teaching him not to pull sounds like a good plan. With the horses I try not to make too many hard and fast decisions about what I'll train until I 'find out where they are at on the day'. Keeping up with where Fido is at, at the moment is pretty interesting. He seems like a very different dog all of a sudden as you expected, although these tendencies had always been present.

I remember my sons changing from behaving like stroppy teenagers to little kids in the space of minutes sometimes. I am wondering if I mistook his behaviour. He may have been telling me he doesn't want to play anymore rather than being actually scared. I’m not sure I would be able to read the difference between ‘Fear’ and ‘I’m not having fun and I’m out of here’. Either way he needs to be having more fun!

Since starting this email I've done a session with him in the school and he was his old cheerful self. Even in relation to the lead which I was fumbling all over him, and being overly obvious with I got him to sit from a distance, fumbled the lead around his chest legs and neck, and then clicked and treated. There was no sign of difficulty.

Sally was there with Pep for some of the time and we swapped dogs and it was very jolly and successful. Last night I got him targeting the lead and this morning he was running around the house with it in his mouth.

Your comment 'You are lucky that he hasn't generalised to think that bad things happen when Richard is around' reminds me of a term I use in horse training. I often joke with clients that I am like a ‘marriage/relationships guidance counsellor’ helping to sort out the horse/man relationship. I’m sure you feel the same. I tell trainers to make sure they have earned plenty of ‘GRACE’ so that when they stuff up, as they inevitably will, the horse will forgive them. The worst thing that can happen is to have the horse wanting a ‘divorce’.

I really like Dr Mc Greevy’s concept of accepting the role of the dogs ‘life coach’. I bring his book down when I’ve finished it. I’m really enjoying it! (‘A Modern Dogs Life’)

Thanks again for input.

Cheers,

Richard