Tonight we arrived a little late to class, mainly because I was daydreaming on the the drive and missed the turn. When I arrived I set up the wobble board and labyrinth as I had been requested. Then I started to warm up Gusto. Since the warm-up had helped him so much last week I wanted to make sure I did the same thing. We did some attention and then some TTouch to get him comfortable and relaxed enough to be able to think and learn.
For his first session we worked him with Kaya again. Kaya was more stressed tonight and had been for at least a few days Lisa said. Lisa is only a week or so away from her delivery date so we had some fun postulating about whether that might be affecting Kaya's behaviour... Who knows? Anyway, her higher intensity made her harder for Gusto to work with. We started out with Gus stationary and Kaya walking around ranging from about 25 - 10 feet away. As Lisa was feeling tired, Anne-Marie worked Kaya and she wanted to establish the working relationship before we made it too hard. Gus did well and I worked on "GENTLE" in an attempt to keep his relaxed mouth we had achieved through the ttouch. We progressed to some following exercises on the road. Gus seemed more stressed by the traffic tonight than I have noted in the past. After some following and parallel walking we did some of the leap frog technique I described last week. I had aske Anne-Marie to add speed in the pass -bys to challenge Gus a little bit more. It certainly worked. He lunged for Kaya as she went by the first time. He quickly recovered though and kept on working. After a few more times with no reaction we returned to the driveway which is noisier due to the gravel. Anne-Marie made it harder again by cutting tighter with Kaya into Gusto's space. Again he lunged, but didn't bark and returned to work right away. After a few more leap frogs with speed, he looked at Kaya when she passed by took a quick step, stopped, took another quick step then decided to just look up at me and work with me. Tina and I both thought this was progress. One last leap frog got no reaction. We went back and had a party in the car and some more ttouch.
Our second session we worked with a husky mix named Winter. Gus let out a low growl when we were about 30 feet away so this was our starting distance for some following work on the road. Gus had no difficulty in front or behind Winter. We did some pass bys on opposite sides of the road, and Gus did well. We did pass bys at 10 feet which again wasn't a problem for Gus. Next we did some parallel walking which was a little more difficult for Gusto, though he didn't have a full blown reaction, he did look at Winter more (aparently Winter was really staring at Gus at the time). Next Anne-Marie pulled out Fischer, her Labrador and we did the speed leap frogs again. Gus seemed less bothered by Fischer that he was with Kaya. Anne-Marie really pushed the distance that she'd cut us off, which definitely pushed the envelop, but Gus did really well. Yeah for Gusto!
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