Touching

Last weekend we had to stay one night at a Hotel. Lisbeth was truely disappointed- wandering around in the room, peeing on the floor and so on. I tried the short walk strategy but it didn't work. I was upset seeing my dog beeing close to destroying the whole room After taking a deep breath and using my brain I just grabbed my dog and sat down with her on the bed. I started petting her calmly and she started to relax. After a while she was ready and returned on her mat by herself. She calmly slept the whole night.

Watch out for little signs

Yesterday we did some everyday training and went to the railway station. We had been there before. We made a short walk at the beginning and then I sat there waiting for nothing. There was nobody else around so it was a calm atmosphere and even if Lisbeth didn't lay down she showed some relaxation signs.
Look at her tail - beeing down totally relaxed - most of the time it is up or wagging! And there was no leash biting!
So success even if the signs were hardly recognisable!

The power of short walks

I try to expose Lisbeth to daily stress from time to time, still watching out for small signs of stress. Some days ago we went to the restaurant. Lisbeth was already a little bit stressed on our way to the restaurant. We set down and ordered something to drink. Lisbeth immidiatly started to chew the leash and was unable to take treats. I decided to make a short walk before returning back home. And like miracle when we returned back to the table Lisbeth was able to calm down with the help of some treats! After a while she was lying down with her head on the ground without the need of any cue! But it still is hard work and we stayed a little bit too long so Lisbeth started to chew her leash again but all in all it was a big success!
And the key was the short walk after arriving there. She had the possibility to pee and returned back not to an unknown but to a familiar place with somebody waiting there for us!

A lot of progress

At the moment daily routine works quite fine. Today I had HomeOffice and Lisbeth slept most of the time. She do not need us to calm down she lies down and falls asleep just by her own. At the beginning we had to close our bedroom door whenever we were not in there because Lisbeth made a big hole in one of our mattress. But some days ago we forgot to close the door by incident and Lisbeth was lying in her bed waiting for us to go to sleep.
Moments like these are getting normality!

The sofa she is lying on the picture above wasn't attacked since 2 weeks!
We still have to respect and take care of her stress level butwe are able to manage it.
Our cousin who sometimes takes care of Lisbeth has observed something similar. At the beginning she had to play with her the whole time to prevent her from doing something wrong but now she is lying down after some moments!
And beside her ability to calm down increases her tolerance to stress increases as well!