Friday, May 24, 2013

Today's Sunshine

Our walk this morning turned out quite interesting. My foot was bothering me and I wanted to keep the walk fairly short and on level ground, leaving two of our usual routes (one circling the outskirts of the village and another winding round the countryside) out of the question since they involve too much walking up and down hills. We have another regular walk (Monster's reactivity requires specific qualities from our routes, like predictability, no or at least few blind corners, regular escape routes in case we get cornered, and so on) but it's incredibly boring, not to mention we've walked it a lot these past couple of months while my leg's been complaining. So I made a somewhat reckless decision and headed off along the road cutting through the centre (such as it is) of the village instead...

Woohoo, I hardly ever get to walk here!


At first all was very quiet, but soon we came across the first potential problem. A woman with a baby carriage left her house across the street and headed out onto the sidewalk. Monster looked at her... and looked away! But then we came to the church, which is having a lot of work done to and around it right now. There were two young women riding around raking the gravel with a lawnmower across the road, and closer to us a man was using a lawnmower in the more conventional way in the graveyard. Up in the tower a couple of guys were shouting at each other over whatever noisy tools they were using. There was no side of the road with nothing happening, and honestly I should have just turned back but I didn't. Monster has a huge problem with lawnmowers, attacking our own with suicidal frenzy... But I let him watch, moving slowly forward at a pace he seemed able to handle, and while he had a couple of moments of fixation he was able to snap out of it and move on with very little prompting from me. Quicker than I could have expected, we'd passed the church! Then we came to a pasture where someone keeps miniature ponies (don't ask me what kind, "brown" is as good a description you'll get from me)...

Wait... Are you saying those weren't dogs!? They were smaller than me!


They proved to be quite a challenge for Monster, he needed to stop and study them repeatedly as we moved along the fence. One of the ponies became interested in us and came up to the fence to take a closer look, which fixated Monster. After a moment or two I became concerned he'd break and lunge, frightening the horse (at no point was he close enough to actually do anything) and I made the mistake of trying to pull him away. That was of course very much the wrong thing to do, and Monster started barking and protesting (the pony looking at us didn't change his curious body posture and the others continued grazing, so Monster's behaviour didn't appear to read as very threatening - presumably they're used to barking dogs since they're pastured in the village along the main road). I immediately relaxed the leash and praised him, and he relaxed right away. We moved on away from there, but Monster needed to stop and look back a couple of times at first (the strange dogs could be following us after all). Then our walk was uneventful for a while, until a man exited his house with a toddler and started walking toward us. I decided we'd had enough excitement, and I didn't want to risk Monster frightening the child so we turned back to avoid meeting them. Of course now we'd have to walk past the same triggers again, only this time with someone coming up behind us so we couldn't keep our own pace...

You didn't think this through, did you?


We passed by the pasture on the other side of the road. Monster wanted to stop and study the horses several times, but I encouraged him to walk along right away since I knew we'd probably need all the head start we had once we got to the church. You know, the church with no safe sides to the road... We got there, and it was worse than when we walked by the first time. Now one of the women was crouched down on the gravel (pulling up weeds?), the riding mower was much closer to the road, the other mower was right on the curb, a car was parked with two men unloading building equipment, and as I stood there looking another car drove up behind us and stopped right in the middle of the road to unhitch a trailer. Behind us the father and child were catching up. We walked forward, and I kept a close eye on Monster all the way. He was very interested in all of it, and I made sure to both keep him close and not tighten the leash, and I praised him constantly - and made sure to do it loudly and in a very silly voice, so people could notice I was coming up on them with a dog who maybe was uncomfortable in the situation. We walked right past!

Of course we did, what did you expect!?


Half a minute later we met two women walking toward us. I immediately changed to the other side of the road but kept walking. In retrospect I wonder if I should have stopped and let Monster study them - he often shows greater reactivity when he's standing still, he appears to feel more vulnerable when he isn't moving as well as it giving him more time to wind up, but on the other hand he can accept a lot more if he's given a chance to study a trigger and figure out if it's really a threat... Right choice or not, this time he broke. As the women drew parallel with us, he lunged and barked and bounced straight up into the air. Fortunately they were more surprised and amazed than frightened, and simply called out a greeting and moved on. As soon as they had their backs turned Monster let it go.

They looked suspicious if you ask me...


Almost home... But no, one last problem. As we were passing a house a dog ran out at us, barking and growling, bouncing back at the end of its line. And not only that, but it was a German Shepherd! Shepherds are Monster's nightmare, he's been attacked by enough of them to consider them all very dangerous... As the dog appeared (scaring even me with its sudden "attack") Monster started to square up against it, but then I saw him change his mind in the middle of the motion and instead turn back along the road and start running away! Now, you may think that's a bad thing but I completely disagree. I want Monster to take the cowardly choice, if there's an escape he should take it! The old Monster would choose confrontation every time, escaping is preferred by far. Unfortunately running isn't so easy for me, messed up ankle and all, but I really tried to reward his choice by letting him run. I didn't make it many steps but it seemed to be enough for Monster anyway, he relaxed even though the dog was still frantic behind us. After that it was smooth sailing all the way back home.

Wanna go again!?!


While he couldn't handle every situation flawlessly, I can't even imagine what would have happened in even one of these encounters just a few months ago. Monster may not be an easy dog to live with, and we may have a lot of restrictions on our daily activities, but for me an experience like this walk is priceless. He's doing so well!

Thank god there weren't any cats, or the whole thing would have been a disaster...




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