Day 1 · The 66 Club

Day 1

So Day 1 is here, thanks Nick for the opportunity to join. I chose today to go for a circular walk from home, roughly half of the distance on pavements (not a particularly busy area) and half on a cycle/footpath on the edge of a wooded area (lovely country environment). The walk is close to half a mile so on my own it takes around 8 minutes to complete.

The challenge today was lead walking. Dillon as a 3 year old (Romanian) rescue is a friendly dog but sensitive to the outside world, probably conditioned by his early months on the streets. The plan today was to get him to heel walk. Dillon likes to sniff and smell. Today when he wanted to stop and sniff, on most ocasssions I asked him to leave so we had lots of leave training. My experience today was he did always move on after the leave command, sometimes in a few seconds and sometimes it would take longer, perhaps a minute or more.

Today, Dillon as per norm, will stop/freeze when someone on their own or with a dog comes towards us, and will usually stay in that position until they have passed. Sometimes he will want to look back at them when they've passed so it takes even longer to move on. So one issue is getting Dillon moving (once he's seen someone) when in his mind he perhaps sees danger in people and dogs. He is motivated by food but this is more difficult at the moment as the vet says he has stomach issues (possibly IBD like) and we now have him on a hydrolysed diet and we havent, as yet, found a suitable treat that he likes.

Anyway we had a great walk, he's great with people and dogs if not a little anxious on first meeting them. For the record the walk took around 23 minutes. And he had a fantastic mental workout.

I have a number of questions/challenges to get him, from his background, to being a great lead walker. By the way, he's made great progress, in the early days it was hard to even get him out the front door and would be completely spooked by things like bikes and pushchairs (thank Livvy for your great help).

A couple of points from today where feedback would be great.

How much should I allow Dillon to sniff/cock his leg when lead walking. Today I allowed him to do this a few times, but guidance here would be good, whats a good balance in heel walking.
I'd like him not to freeze when he sees a stranger, with or without a dog, coming towards him.

Back on the blog tomorrow.

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