{"id":1712,"date":"2021-12-31T05:15:31","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T13:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2021-12-31T09:44:47","modified_gmt":"2021-12-31T17:44:47","slug":"looking-back-the-length-of-a-leash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2021\/12\/31\/looking-back-the-length-of-a-leash\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back the Length of a Leash"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past year, I\u2019ve been dogblogging about the things I\u2019ve learned, working with Max.\u00a0 <\/span>This week I took a pause and looked back over those twelve months, the process of bringing her from adorable puppy to Almost Adult despite Life During Covid, which has been just as hard on dogs as it has people (cats, mostly, haven\u2019t given a fuck).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be honest, there were days (weeks) when I wasn\u2019t sure either one of us were going to make it.<\/p>\n

Max a good girl, mostly.\u00a0 <\/span>Sweet, affectionate. But seemingly overnight she developed a fear reaction (expressed in defensive behavior), and it hit just as she was going into the predictable stage of \u201cI know what that command is, I just don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to listen to it,\u201d around nine months.\u00a0 <\/span>Also seemingly overnight, she went from \u201cI can trust her with anyone\u201d to \u201cI can\u2019t trust her with anyone but me.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>And that\u2019s not much of an exaggeration: I<\/b> knew that her barking and lunging was defensive, but to non-dog-people, it looked scary as hell, and a scared person and a scared dog is a bad combination.<\/p>\n

I was convinced I\u2019d screwed her up, that I\u2019d done something wrong, or not done something right,\u00a0 <\/span>that I\u2019d taken a perfectly good pupper and given her anxiety.<\/p>\n

That was\u2026 a rough few months.\u00a0 <\/span>Max had to be isolated from strangers, which meant her outings, already limited by Covid, were cut back even more, interfering with her socialization – the very thing she needed to get over her anxiety.\u00a0 <\/span>And she – who honestly loves<\/i> most people – didn\u2019t understand why she didn\u2019t get to go to work with me any more.<\/p>\n

We worked with a canine behaviorist, and I talked with other people who had ACD mixes. I did my homework and Max did hers.\u00a0 <\/span>And what I kept hearing was, \u201cshe\u2019s a good dog. She wants to avoid trouble, not dive into it.\u00a0 <\/span>She loves and trusts you, you\u2019ve given her the right training; now you need to trust her to grow into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that was the hardest part: trusting her.\u00a0 <\/span>Letting her stand and observe a situation rather than redirecting her immediately.\u00a0 <\/span>Keeping an eye on her body language, letting her decide if this was someone she was comfortable with or not, rather than removing her as a preventative measure.\u00a0 <\/span>It seemed entirely counter to everything I\u2019d been taught before.<\/p>\n

But slowly, it began to work.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not perfect yet.\u00a0 <\/span>It never will be – Max is too smart for her own good (and certainly too smart for my own), and overthinks herself into stress. And there will always be people who frighten or trigger her. But the past twelve months, I\u2019ve learned to accept her for the dog she is, rather than the dog I\u2019d expected, and not let the worry override the love. And she understands now, I think, that she\u2019s allowed to bark when she\u2019s upset, and come to me for reassurance, rather than throw herself into a defensive frenzy.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re a work in progress, and she\u2019s probably never going to be good with running kids, or sleds, or people who stick their hands in her face.\u00a0 <\/span>But honestly, she doesn\u2019t have to be.<\/p>\n

Fact is, we\u2019re all getting out of 2021 with a touch of anxiety.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve got nothing particularly profound to end on, after that, except\u2026.<\/p>\n

to be continued.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past year, I\u2019ve been dogblogging about the things I\u2019ve learned, working with Max.\u00a0 This week I took a pause and looked back over those twelve months, the process of bringing her from adorable puppy to Almost Adult despite Life During Covid, which has been just as hard on dogs as it has people (cats, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,56],"tags":[160,57,399],"class_list":["post-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals-pets","category-life-experiences","tag-dogs","tag-laura-anne-gilman","tag-year-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1715,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}