Today's Sunshine

We had a new training session with Teach this afternoon. It's been two weeks since last time, and while I'd love to claim Monster and I had made great progress in that time that is of course not true. We did make great progress in the session, though!

I'm sorry, are you implying this is a surprise somehow?

When we got there Monster was still pretty agitated, very focused on the happenings in the surrounding neighborhood, staring and on his toes. He lunged at Teach's face a couple of times (not trying to connect, just making a point), he bit me (not hard, again just making a point) which really surprised me, and was generally very difficult and backslidery. In spite of that we quickly worked our way up close to a staged person. Once there, Monster was allowed to sniff. Then he was allowed to interact, first taking treats she threw on the ground, then calmly eating straight from her hand!

Give me that turkey, human!

I have to hand it to her, she was great at being a Monster guinea pig! She was very careful to not look Monster in the eyes, consistently turning away while at the same time feeding him treats (I'm always impressed with people who can multitask and coordinate their movements, two things I fail at completely). When the treats ran out Monster would try to seek eye contact with her (amazing!), stepping around and trying to find an angle where she'd look at him, but she resisted him (also amazing, resisting Monster is another thing I suck at!).

Why wouldn't she look at me, I'm the cutest thing in the world!?

We did this approach multiple times, Monster walking toward her calmly, accepting treats from her calmly (well, there were some attempts to get to know her better, but nothing unmanageable and nothing aggressive), and then letting Monster choose to walk away from her when she stopped interacting with him. I'm not sure how long we were at it, or how many greetings we did, but not once did Monster act up. (Teach made sure to stay at least partially between Monster and... Guinea Girl at all times, just in case.)

Next time I'm getting a kiss!

She wound up quite slobbery toward the end, but I suppose that's how it goes for Guinea Girl... (She should have her own superhero comic, I can't believe there isn't already a Guinea Girl out there! ... Don't tell me if there is one...)

In the end, it was a pretty awesome and successful day. I really needed that, I've been feeling a little down lately about our chances. I think poor Teach may have thought I was a bit pessimistic and dour today, but I just had problems processing what had happened. It really went great!

Of course it did, silly. Thanks to me!