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It’s a dogs life



Just when some things get easier, e.g Abi deciding that actually she should wait until she’s 12 before having a pony (who knew she was so sensible?!?), other things become a pain. This week I have mainly been worried about the dogs... that is when I’m not stressing about Abi wanting to know exactly how many days it is until she’s 12,  whether I’ve worked out where she will keep this pony if it transpires, as well as what we should feed it and what colour blankets it should have...

Anyway, back to the dogs. After our altercation with another dog I arranged for a dog trainer to come out and visit us, with the hope she might shed some light on what we can do. I didn’t expect a quick fix but I was hoping that it would be a case of “just do a, b and c and you’ll be on your way”. Instead we discussed both dogs at length (while Freya sat and watched us with a sad face) and then we went to do some ground training (which I’m supposed to repeat multiple times a day), designed to get her to think more about her feet and keep her head down. Apparently ‘reactive dogs’ are even more prone to over stimulation because they have their heads up which increases the cortisol which in turn increases adrenaline and so it gets worse. Great given Freya spends her entire walk with her head in the air hoping a squirrel will drop out of the sky into her mouth (you never know!).  Also it’s clear (I didn’t need an expert to tell me this) that she takes her cue from Bertie and when he goes off after a dog so does she, only he knows to not get stuck in, she doesn’t. Having now read ALOT, I think he is what the dog people call a ‘frustrated greeter’. He gets so over excited when he first meets another dog, but then calms down if allowed the space to do so. Brilliant, I have the perfect combination of 2 dogs with different antisocial handicaps! 

In addition to dog obstacle courses 3 times a day there are the rewards. Now Freya was all for high value rewards at home when we practiced, but when we went out she really wasn’t bothered. Bertie on the other hand thought it was brilliant that I had a pocket full of cheese and followed me like a shadow in the hope of having it all. I’m not sure I’m cut out to have perfect dogs. I think I will fail even the basic training if this is what it’s like. The trainer said that I need to make the walk “all about them and as exciting as possible”. Huh! I didn’t have the energy to say there are very few moments in the day that are actually about me and dog walking is one of them. I think I may just accept that when I walk them at a time we might meet others I’ll just keep one of them on the lead. Between that and a pocket full of Bertie cheese we might make some progress in time.

In other news this weekend we have had a mini ‘beast from the East’ which was most unexpected and dumped another 4” of snow on us. Who knew that was coming? No-one was very pleased this time. It meant Abi couldn’t ride (cue tears as she had prepared a million questions for Sandra on livery, all of which needed to be asked NOW), and the rest of us were somewhat house bound. Actually Glenn went out on his motorbike (off road) and fell off a million times, while Abi and I ended up going for a lovely walk to look for fields which could be private or livery yards - it's a theme as you can tell. At least we didn't take the dogs otherwise it would definitely not have been a walk with my sanity in mind! Hopefully the snow is melting now rather than making for a logistically difficult last week of term. This time next week we will have had our first day of skiing - eek!




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