We love Tracking

Tracking is my favorite dog game for my easily aroused dog Lisbeth.

She needs to work calm and concentraded to solve the task and I definitely builds up her self esteem.
Today I managed to film her working on her track!
It was her I don't know 15th-20th track... I do not count. So she isn't a newy but you can call her still beginner.
It's a 20min old track but I think the task was too easy. She follows a track I made without her watching me (she was waiting at home) The next step would be to make it much longer! And I would prefer that the track was made by somebody else.
But back to the VIDEO:
I like the scene when she stops because she lost the track - thinks and follows the track again (minute 1:13)
And I love the end when she is laughing proudly into the camera whem I arrive there.
What I do not like is that it took me so long until I praised her.

I'm sorry for the bad quality, but I have just a pocket camera. And its not so easy to organize the long leash, the camera, watch and follow the dog....

It was all too much

Driven from the great success we had - I exposed Lisbeth to more frequent stress situations with a lot of treats and patience.

BUT
It was too much for Lisbeth....
Having a 2 hour walk with a new "dogfriend" in an unfamiliar environment - too much!
1 hour walk in a park (new environment) with seeing and greeting some dogs -  too much!
Visiting human friends - too much!

Lisbeth is restless again. Like in the beginning she needs my help to calm down on evenings. The chewing of shoes and furniture is worse again and bladder infection is coming back as well!

So back to the beginning!
We reduce walking time again, we will just stay in the familiar environment. A lot of chews during the walks.
Will it sometimes be possible to life a normal doggy life???

Beeing polite to our dogs

In addition to my last post I want to add some lines.
Actually I already did this following my godfeeling but reading it in a book reminded me, that this might be interseting for others as well.
Most of us love to pet our dog's, but not all dogs love to be touched. But we can simply asked our dogs if they like our touches or not.
Pet you dog for a short time, then stop and wait for a response.
Does your dog show any calming signals or does he even stand up to leave or is he crawling near hoping to be touched again.
I use to ask my dog because I think petting should be enjoyable fo her - try to be polite and to the same!

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!