I took the dogs on our first one-person walk since we started working on Spring's walk confidence. Spring tail-o-meter: medium to med-high!!!
Jack has been encouraging him and reinforcing staying on the right side so he doesn't constantly switch and tangle the leash or trip us, but I can't do this for single person walks - Addy is in the way and he wants to be away from her to avoid getting trampled. So I mostly reinforced staying up ahead of me, as well as all relaxation signs.
He marked and pooped all before we hit the corner of our street! Good things, extra treats for pottying.
He got discouraged for a minute with my initially trying to reinforce right side when he started to hang around legs and behind me. But once I stopped and just reinforced staying ahead, he rebounded.
Started getting anxious as usual around midpoint of the walk, tail down and focused on walking straight as fast as he can. But I tossed treats for him to chase & he got treats when we paused for Addy to sniff. The end of his tail would curl up a little each time he got a treat. 😂 So after slowly relaxing again, he was back to midway up & was stopping to sniff again after a couple streets! And he marked again at the street before ours!
He finished the walk with tail most of the way up, even with passing a kid on some weird scooter on our street. Really good, I think, for our first solo person walk! It's harder to encourage and reinforce him being up ahead when there's only me and I'm rewarding him from behind. But being able to take them alone means more walks for them, so I'm glad it went this well! 💙












