#you were so excited to have a ''DoOdLe DoG'' that you forgot it was half-poodle

[nientedal]

Your dog is not "neurotic." Your dog is half-poodle.

[dipper-at-work]

Public Access Training Nightmare and Victory

“Nightmare” may be too strong a word, but it sure felt like it at the time. 

Yesterday, I took Dipper for his first outing since being neutered a week and a half ago, and now I’m kicking myself going “WHY YOU DID THAT?!?!?!” I hadn’t thought it entirely through, apparently. We went to the mall for ice cream. Sounds simple enough, certainly easier than Target, which he’d crushed about two weeks ago. BUT there were things I didn’t consider: one, by the time we left it was Friday evening at four pm, which is typically when people swarm to the mall. Two, he’d been pretty exclusively in our back yard while he was healing, and so a blah outing was WAY more exciting than it normally would have been. Three, it was his second no-dogs-here!!! outing ever. FOUR, my sisters kept petting him and talking to him, which I didn’t actually notice (and I think they didn’t notice either) because it’s such a normal thing.

So we got to the mall, and I could tell he was excited. It took us a little longer than normal to get his head in the game, especially with youths blaring music out of their cars, which for some reason really intrigued him yesterday. But, we got there -- did some sit and down stays, some ‘focus’es and his attention was on me. It wandered a little when kids tottered by, but for the most part he did well. We took the lift down and went to Dairy queen (which was a grand total of five minutes from our parking spot). We did some focuses and down stays when we got out on the main floor, because he was very interested in kids bopping about. He did well, heeled nicely, waited patiently sandwiched between myself and the counter as I ordered, and then tucked away under the little table SO WELL that nobody noticed him (except these two little girls sitting at the table in front of ours who kept staring back at him). As we were smack in the MIDDLE of the hallway with people constantly passing, this was a source of endless pleasure. He shuffled around a bit, but the only thing poking out from under the table was is floofy-poof of a tail (we’re working on him tucking that in xD). Not a single person noticed my massive, powder-puff puppy! I was over the moon! 

And a little too confident. So we finished our ice cream and I was like “GODDAMIT LET’S CONQUER STARBUCKS AND TRY THIS UNICORN NONSENSE!” 

So we went to Starbucks (literally six metres away from DQ). He heeled nicely, looked interested when a two-year-old blazed right passed his nose, but otherwise ignored the little boy and his dinosaur shirt (profuse apologies from the baby’s mummy), and didn’t break his heel. HUZZAH! Victory number two! 

When we got into Starbucks, there was a line, and the space was quite tight. To get him out of the way as much as possible, I had him ‘enter’ between my legs, and we progressed to the counter, with him moving forward when I did. Another great victory, because that was something we’d just started learning. When our turn came, the lady asked what we wanted, we ordered, she said they just ran out. Drat. And then she saw the puppy. SHE SAW THE PUPPY! And all of a sudden it was “OH-MY-GOD-HE’S-SO-CUTE-HE’S-A-POODLE-RIGHT-LET-ME-PET-HIM-RIGHT-NOW!!” -reaches all the way across the bar to pet the puppy-

That was when I started to loose me. I started to panic (one point to team anxiety!!). He leaned forward to sniff her and I made a correction, told him ‘no’, told her ‘he’s working’, and was starting to dissociate as she talked about her golden doodle. We left pretty quickly, did some basic focus exercises as we headed to the parking lot, but I was having a hard time retaining his attention because (1) I was freaking out and not all there and (2) people were making baby noises at him, despite the fact we were pulled off in an isolated corner. I got his attention more or less back on me, and we were leaving (I was SUPER out of it at this point) when he saw a little dog running after this kid, and he barked. One bark, that was it, but it sent me off the deep end. He heeled, tucked nicely in the lift, stayed out of everyone’s way, nice controlled entry back into the car, but HE BARKED, and that had destroyed me for the day. I’m starting to disconnect even as I write about it. 

At the end of the day, I know it’s my fault. I should have seen the signs that this was too challenging an outing for RIGHT then. I also have to remind myself to focus on the victories of this outing: his great tucking under the table, the ‘enter’ that we’d never done before in public, his maintaining a good heel despite the kid running by, and (one I forgot to mention) paying no attention when a strange lady reached right over him to grab a free sample at DQ, and then shrieked a bit when she noticed there was a dog there (out of startled-ness, not because he’s a terrifying monster. In this current mullet-haircut, you’re more likely to die laughing than to die of fright!) 

I have to focus on the victories, which may be small but are significant nonetheless, rather than letting that one mistake ruin myself for public access practice. It is still practice, after all. 

Holy crap that was long.