Rhiya brought a puppy home...

Well... yesterday was an eventful day after work. I got off work late, checked my phone, and saw a text that Ben (the fiance) had sent me an hour earlier. It read, "I was going to take Rhiya on a walk, but did you want me to wait til you get home?"

... so I reply back, "Yeah I was planning to walk with her tonight. I'm just leaving work."

To which he replies to me with, "Ok well we are actually almost done."

... and i respond with, "Okay. then no worries."

So I'm almost home when I get a phone call from Ben asking where I'm at and telling me that I might pass him and Rhiya on our street.  Then he says, "You'll never guess what we picked up!' ... I think of everything possible and still can't figure out what he's talking about. Rhiya isn't really the type of dog to pick up sticks, or other items along the way. She is too anxious scanning the path for possible "Threats".

Finally, Ben says, "We picked up a little yellow lab puppy..."

I'M SPEECHLESS at that point, wondering if he's lost his mind. Contemplating HOW in the hell they are near another dog on their walk... and more importantly WHAT is Rhiya doing while in the presence of this dog. Is she safe?  Is the other dog safe?  ... and if she isn't reacting, am I the one that is causing her to be reactive???

So as I turn onto our street, sure enough, I see Ben walking with Rhiya on his left, and the yellow lab "Puppy", who is probably about 6-8 months old, so not really "little puppy" sized, wandering in the front yards of houses on our street to the right of Ben. Ben and Rhiya were walking on the sidewalk, Rhiya looking at the yellow lab, then back to the front, then back at Ben, and back to the yellow lab.... not thrashing around on the leash or lunging towards the dog, NOTHING!

I WAS STUNNED!!!

So I drive ahead a bit and pull into our driveway, with Ben and Rhiya close behind... followed by the yellow lab. Ben takes Rhiya inside, still no freak outs from her, AMAZING. I kneel down,  the yellow lab comes over, and I notice she has a city pet license. So I grab the spare leash out of my car, and Ben and I rush to the city offices, only to get there 4 minutes late and then realize it was a Pocatello license, not Chubbuck license. So we rush to my vet who is 5 minutes away, and open until 5:30 pm, with the hopes that maybe this sweet girl has a microchip... no luck. :-(

So I snap some pics, post them on "social media"... also known as Facebook... and we head back to our neighborhood so that Ben can show me where the dog first "picked them up". After about 45 minutes of slowly driving through the neighborhood and asking random people if they may know who the pup belongs to, we finally found her dad! It turns out the sweet young girl was named Maggie, and her dad, Johnathan, was happy to have her back. Johnathan is part of the construction crew building a house in our neighborhood. I kindly suggested to him that he get her chipped so that if Maggie goes exploring again, she will always get back to him!

So it was a happy ending to an encounter that could have had many different outcomes! Ben said when Maggie first came up behind Rhiya, that it did startle Rhiya, but instead of Rhiya lunging toward Maggie Rhiya tried to pull away while huffing a puffing slightly. Still this is a HUGE improvement over her reactions/outbursts a year ago.

I'M ONE PROUD MAMA!!!

I'm even more proud to have a wonderful fiance willing to take my "Trouble Child" out and work with her!!! He's a keeper ladies... and he's off the market LOL :-)


ps... There's NOTHING sexier than a man wearing a treat pouch on his hip!!!

Mondays aren't always bad!

Rhiya and I went walking again Monday night since Sunday had gone SOOO well. Again, I loaded up the treat bag, put on her halti head collar and we headed out. She is getting more focused on me since I have tried to switch things up a bit by turning around without much, if any, warning, stopping to make her sit and do some tricks, and constantly talking to her while we walk. I'm sure others who are out can hear us and they may think I'm crazy... Good, I am! :-)

Again we passed by several houses and yards with dogs barking. She would look at the dog, while panting heavily, and then look back at me. I'm so proud of her I can hardly contain my excitement. We only had one Bark for the entire 2.15 mile walk on Monday night. It occurred while we were walking past a house and a schnauzer was barking and charging at his fence. Rhiya and I were on the other side of the street from this dog, and the minute she saw him charge the fence she Barked pretty loudly. I quickly responded with a "Leave It" command and we turned around to head the other way. She was still looking at the dog and then looking back at me, but she didn't make any other noise at all. we were able to re-approach and pass by the house with the schnauzer.

I'm still continuing to work on the C.A.R.E. protocol in that whenever she looks at a dog and doesn't bark she gets a treat and a "GOOD GIRL!!!" we are keeping our distance right now to make sure she can stay under threshold, but we will slowly move closer to the triggers in hopes of making more progress. She is such a smart dog, and I am so lucky shes in my life.  That may not make much sense to some of you, but she has taught me so much.

Here are a few pictures from our Monday evening walk.

sitting pretty, waiting to cross the road.

Looking at the Horses... last time she saw them she freaked out. 

all great walks end with a visit to the watering hole.

After 5 months of Winter...

... We headed out yesterday for a nice walk. I was worried that 5 months of minimal exposure to triggers would have set Rhiya back, but I was oh so wrong.  My 2.5 mile walk with Rhiya was actually MORE peaceful and relaxing than the walk with Dallas, Ben (the fiance) and Samantha. I was completely shocked, and SO VERY proud of my girl.

We set out with an OVERFLOWING treat bag on my right hip and Rhiya walking calmly on my left. At the end of the 2nd block, we were walking down the middle of the street because there were dogs barking behind fences on both sides of us... I put her in a Sit-Stay and gave her the watch me command. She would look at me, and look back towards the barking dogs. she was panting pretty heavily, so I knew she was nervous. I decided to try to get her to do some tricks (wave, shake, etc.) to get her focus on something other than the dogs. To my surprise she did all of them! there were only TWO instances where she barked at a dog... but she only barked once each time and then I was able to get her to sit and focus on me and do some more tricks before we passed by the dogs with no outbursts. 

I'm so happy the weather is turning nice again. I have missed being out with my girl and working with her to overcome her fears. Stay tuned for more updates to come. Sorry we've been absent for the last few months.