Training Spillo is problematic. Just when we thought everything was going smoothly Spillo lunged and barked at a jogger and an old lady with a kid in 2 separate incidents. I'm taking this seriously. I've taken a step back in the training. In other words I keep a minimum distance of 2meters away from everyone we walk by. I treat as usual for not barking at people. Also I ask for a trick every 3/5mins of our walks. Everything is under control.
Of course it's not as stressful as a few months ago. I look like a suspicious person on our walks. lol I look left, right, back and front. When there is someone, I make a big arch to avoid the person. Like there was a person sweeping the doorway of her house a few days ago, we crossed to the other side of the road to avoid her altogether. Seems like an over reaction on my part, but it takes just a second for something to happen.
A jogger came from behind silently, no reaction from Spillo *phew … why? I asked for "dietro" aka heel about a 1 minute ago, so that help because he was waiting for the next command and ignoring the passing jogger. One mini victory for me.
A friend of mine wanted to bring a child to visit us, but later postponed it to next year. How we going to train him to not bark at kids? If there was a steady stream of kids coming in and out of the house, we would have plenty of opportunities. As it is now, nobody wants to risk their kids being barked at right? So it's a catch 22 situation.
It takes willpower to create these kind of "training props". With our work schedules as they are it's going to be slow and it will take a long time before we see results. We have seen that in repeating a situation over, he becomes less reactive after many repeats. Well, our lives shouldn't stop for Spillo. Ideally we would like to bring him out like to a restaurant or out and about in town doing things. But as it stands now we can't.
#sliceoflife #trainingSpillo #jogger #minimumdistance #notbarking #undercontrol #suspiciousperson #walks #overreaction #ignoring #victory #kids #risk #catch22 #trainingprops #workschedules
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