Training Challenge #4

We did another walk along a busy-ish street for my training challenge again this week. A lot of parks around here are big grassy areas for athletic events and they have walking/jogging/bike paths around them and through them which parallel streets. So usually when we go to these parks, we walk only in the grass and on the interior paths. Today of course we tackled a section of the path near the street. Mom was armed with her experience from last week and with some ground turkey!

We parked the car and the minute we got out, I could hear the cars passing by. We headed out on this path and turned right. I was excited and not exactly loose-leash walking but definitely not over the top.

Mom had me sit on the path each time a car came by - surprisingly a lot of cars for this area! As long as I sat, I was able to stay under control and watch the car and then turn to look at mom for my turkey treat. I seem to be able to handle cars going by if I am not moving myself (after some sits, we tried it with me standing still). But if I am moving and the cars are moving, I get too excited.

We were careful not to push too hard this time - we walked a ways up the path and then turned around to go back towards our car. We took a little break in the shade and watched the cars.

Mom asked me to do some tricks and stuff this close to the street (on leash of course - don't worry!). Here I am doing a down - not super relaxed, but I did it. I did down, stand, cross paws, turn right. I even did some hand touches (we've been working on that game Kathy and her BCs are doing). At first I wouldn't touch mom's hand with my nose - I would go close but not touch. But then I started doing it! Cool! I can actually think a little bit when cars are going by!

Here is the part of the path where we were working on my tricks - over there near the bench and you can see the street to the left.

After the challenge we went back to our car and got our flexi leash and just went for a fun walk away from the streets in the park. It was so pretty outside - sunny and 75. Look at the drinking fountains they have here - a dog level one - but I am too finicky to drink from it.

We're on an interior path and the street is way over by those trees. I didn't realize how brown our grass is getting around here until I saw this picture.

The path back to the parking lot.

So this training challenge was more of a success than last week. Working on my self control when cars are around is not a very glamorous challenge, but it is one that continues to put us way out of our comfort zone - that's for sure. Mom still dreams of being able to walk with me ANY WHERE so we'll just have to keep working on it. The bury-your-head-in-the-sand method of dealing with my issues isn't ever going to resolve them and that is why we need the training challenge!

Gotta zoom!

Ricky