But first, I am learning that Frodo is a much softer dog than I every thought, and that a lot of times what I have been considering a continuation of the sniffing and the slowness on our walks is actually Frodo shutting down. The majority of it I still consider to be just his personality and who he is, and he still does not go for long walks, even when he is completely not shut down.

However, the other day we were walking and I saw a man walking two shepherd mixes coming up behind us. I have seen him walking these dogs a lot over the last few years and I don't care for his methods at all. His dogs are completely scared of him and that in itself makes me nervous, and I have never seen them up close to other dogs before. He walks them on leashes that are probably 10 ft. long or more and they are never near his side or look like they are under control. Needless to say I did not want them running up on us, and with Frodo's normal pace there was no way they would not reach us before the next alley we could duck into.

So I tried to hurry Frodo along (talking in a happy voice and trying to keep him moving), but the last 30 feet or so I did end up dragging him past trees that he wanted to sniff and far enough into the alley that I thought he could work without a reaction as the dogs passed (he hadn't noticed the dogs following us at all). By dragging I mean I continued walking when he went to try and sniff trees, meaning there was pressure on the leash and he had to follow me. Instead what I got was a shut down dog that was offering calming signals and wouldn't show any response to my attempts at getting his focus.

So I have been trying to work on not pulling him away from anything that he has been sniffing on our walks since that incident. The problem is that I feel as though it is an impossible goal. No treat, no matter how high-value, is going to outweigh the pleasure of sniffing trees, etc. for him, and I don't have 4 hours to make it around the block. I'm not sure what to do on that front because I can't take a whole walk in the middle of roads with the way my town is set up and even trying constant reinforcement past places he wants to sniff fails. If it's not one thing, it's another!

In other news, that day that we had the incident with the shepherd mixes we also saw two American Bulldogs and a Poodle being walked (we saw the poodle after the shepherd incident, which tells me at least Frodo has the ability to rebound from being shut down in a fairly short amount of time), and Frodo didn't react to any of them. Granted, we weren't right on top of them, and I was even wondering whether he saw them at all since he didn't react, but if he didn't see them I know he could smell them. When I saw them I got him close enough to where I thought he would show interest but not be pushed past his threshold, and asked him to sit. I tried to play the LAT game, pointing out the dogs and everything, but he didn't want to look at them, he stared at me and waited for me to reward him for sitting. The same happened with the poodle!

Side note, but I think one of my biggest issues with training a reactive dog is that I am so bad at measuring distance visually.

Reactivity is such a pain in the butt because although Frodo didn't react at all to the dogs we saw that day, I know he has reacted to dogs that were further away than those dogs were! And I know he will again! I think one of the biggest reasons that he didn't react was because those dogs didn't even give him a second glance. They were well behaved and completely under control. I wish there were more dogs like that around here. I wish my dog was one of them.

In yet other news, we had a good and a bad experience with children. The bad experience happened toward the end of our walk yesterday, the same walk where we had the shut down incident and where we saw all of the well-behaved dogs. We were headed toward home in an alley and we turned the corner to find some kids playing in the alley. Frodo showed interest so I asked for attention, which he gave, and we moved forward. One little girl asked if she could pet Frodo. I thanked her for asking (I LOVE when they ask rather than just charge, though I have become quite good at body blocking, just in case), but said that Frodo didn't always get along with children.

So instead of saying okay and going back to playing with her friends, she stood as close to us as we walked by as she could. I could tell it was deliberate and fought the urge to physically move her out of the way myself. Now, everyone who knows me knows that I dislike children. I wish them no ill will, but I don't like them and prefer to not interact with them. Instances like these only further that dislike.

Regardless, Frodo ended up giving a low growl towards her as we passed (which did nothing in aiding her to move, by the way) and I did my best to hold his attention. While it didn't escalate beyond that, he was clearly signaling that he was uncomfortable with her being that close to him. It upset me because we had done so good that day with his triggers and he would have been fine had the little girl not been a brat and had I not allowed him to get pushed past his threshold. If I could do it again, I would definitely have turned around, though I decided against it yesterday because we had already been gone longer than normal and it was the only path that I knew to my house with no dogs.

I do feel that we somewhat made up for it this morning when we dealt with a daycare group. We were leaving my house and it was quite early in our walk and a familiar road. I heard them before I saw them, so I had time to get Frodo where I wanted him. I put him in a sit and as the daycare children crossed the street I rewarded him for looking at them. It was a success, absolutely no growling or posturing, though he was definitely interested. They were about as quiet as any group of 5-6 year olds in a group who see a dog, and Frodo took it all in stride. A few times he just focused on me and I even had to encourage him to look at the group so that I could mark it. Overall, it was great!

Those were the good and the bad experiences of our walks today and yesterday, but we also have made progress with the mat work. We worked on it this morning and he is probably at about 80% for going to the mat and offering a sit. I then mark it and throw the treat so that he has to choose to come back to the mat. For the end of the lesson I allowed him to stay sitting on the mat while I intermittently fed him treats. I think I am going to do one more session tonight when I get home from work and then tomorrow morning start the Protocol for Relaxation.

That is all I can think of to update on at the moment!