Today's Sunshine

We've had an absolutely wonderful walk today, and in glorious weather! Not only was it a nice walk, but it provided us with some excellent training opportunities:

• We met a woman with a dog coming toward us on a path I meant to turn onto. Instead we walked a little ways away, and then I turned and led Monster back in a half circle around the meeting. This is a pair we see out and about fairly frequently, she's a power walker (good grief she moves fast) and has a large male Golden Retriever (I think) on a Flexi lead. He doesn't much like Monster (understandable) and they're a fairly difficult trigger for Monster. Today he had no problem turning away from them, engaging in other things as we circled around them (sniffing instead of staring), but was a bit interested in them (turned back to look several times) once we were back on the same path and moving away from each other. Not the smoothest passing in the history of dog walking, but with Monster's issues and his particular history with extreme reactions toward this particular dog it was downright marvelous. I'd estimate we were about... seven meters apart at the closest.
  
• We met a biker coming toward us on a narrow bike path (approximately 1.5 meters wide or so), Monster noticed it while it was still far away and became quite interested. When the bike was ~20-30 meters away I steered Monster to the side and stepped into the grass beside the path. Monster kept his attention on the bike, but kept moving forward. The bike passed without problems, I even looked up and said hi, and it was less than one meter away (with me in between Monster and the bike).
  
• As we turned a bend in the path we spotted a person walking toward his parked bike, who then led the bike around, got on, and started biking toward us. Since this was a bit more unusual (Monster likes things to be one thing or the other, not several things at once: a moving car is OK, a parked car is OK, a car that first moves and then stops is suspicious, for example) I not only stepped off the path, but also over the ditch to create more of a distance. It seems to me a lot - not all, but in at least some ways something like ~75% - of Monster's issues are linked not so much to distance as to borders. If he's on a road and you're on that same road, there's two of you but only one road: clearly you're going to kill him for stealing your road. Similarly, if both of you are in a fairly large field there's still just one field - conflict. But if we step off the road onto the shoulder: you have the road to yourself, and we have the shoulder. Fine, no conflict, and we can pass each other a lot closer than he'd be able to if we shared that large field. So in this case, with the "weird" biker (remember him?) we not only left the road, we stepped across a very clear separation (the ditch) between the road and the edge of a field. No conflict, the biker had the road to himself and therefore wasn't a threat... We passed each other calmly.
  
• As we got to the station some construction workers had blocked our usual path, and the only one open to us (other than turning back) led us quite close to a couple of guys working on a wall. I took Monster in a steady grip, kept my pace even, and led him straight past (Monster unfortunately on the side closest to the guys). One of the guys turned toward us, but I caught his eye and shook my head as I gently praised Monster - and we walked straight past!
  
• Final one: We walked through a neighboring village when a car came driving up behind us veeeeery slowly, with something-or-other screaming bloody murder inside the engine (or wherever: what I know about cars you could fit onto a stamp!). I thought there was no way Monster would be able to handle it, but he looked up at me with a slightly anxious look and I calmly (faked! so, so faked!) praised him and told him to keep walking. Which he did! Only the car just passed us and then it stopped... It turned out to be a service van for... err... one of the electricity-thing-boxes-whatever you see on some streets? And a couple of men got out and started to unload a bunch of tools. It was a very narrow street, and big men loudly handling strange tools are close to the worst thing Monster can think of (the two top things on the list are: 1) Anyone Mom's angry with; and 2) A man walking toward us with angry voice). I'd stopped as soon as the car stopped ahead of us, to evaluate the situation and decide how to handle it, but it was clear that they wouldn't be moving any time soon... So, for whatever reason I decided the situation was manageable and we set off walking forward again. As we drew level to the car Monster was less than half a meter away from the nearest man (with me in between) - who turned toward us and said "That's not a small dog!"... I mumbled something (I have no idea what I said) without taking my eyes off Monster, every hair on my body was literally on end - very weird feeling! - I was so tense, and just kept walking past. No problem! Super cool Monster! Well, maybe not cool exactly. But instead something far more important: concerned, but looking to me for guidance! Wow. What a feeling! I think I bounced on happy clouds all the way home...

(And to everyone claiming dogs can "psychically" feel how you feel, and if you have a reactive dog that's just because you are projecting nervousness and in order to have a calm dog you need to be calm: that's not true. Not only is it not how you feel but instead how you act, it's actually perfectly possible to have a reactive dog if you're half asleep and about as revved up as Eeyore. And you can totally fake calm. Don't tell people to relax, stop shortening the leash around triggers, stop scanning  for potential surprises, and so on. I hate that advise! It's dangerous to give a reactive dog a slack leash, it's dangerous to not pay attention and get a surprise. A dog's behavior is not in the head of the owner! A dog is its own living, thinking being, and while our behavior (note behavior; not beta waves) can certainly affect theirs, they're not an extension of our own consciousness. There is a lot of ridiculous advice out there (usually from people who once had a teenaged dog act up once or twice which they then "fixed" due to their exceptional dogsmanship... yeah, right, pull the other one...) and a lot of it is certainly quite harmful, but this type of advice is the most tiresome. Acting calm is important, but feeling calm isn't. If you have a dog like Monster you have good reason to not feel the least bit calm, and you don't need to work on meditation, calm breathing, or any of that - not unless you can't separate your feelings and you actions. On the contrary, not feeling calm keeps you alert. I say, fight the calm nazis!)

Dude. Chill! Want a taste of my stick?

 And really. What is it with people and the weird size comments!? I know I'm not alone (I found an old blog post from another CC-owner listing strange comments and questions he'd heard on walks), so apparently a lot of people feel the need to comment on a CC's size (and probably other large breeds too?). "That's not a small dog!", "What a big dog!", "That's just a puppy, right? hehehe", "Where's that dog going to walk you?", "What's that Great Dane mixed with - a horse?", "Are you sure you're feeding that thing enough?", "Couldn't you find one in a bigger size?", "Do you have an elephant farm?", "Look at the tiny puppy!", "Oh, aren't you just a precious little doll?", and so on, and so on... Why? Is it an expression of discomfort, they're afraid of him and try to find safety in humor? Because he's smaller than a Great Dane, for instance... I honestly find it a bit weird.

As long as they note my beauty, it's all good with me.