New-found calm

I took Amika to the tracking trial today, even though she wasn’t entered. She spent the majority of the time in the car. Since last week, we’ve found out that the bladder thing isn’t an infection, but it could be a bladder stone (can’t afford ultrasound just now) or a non infected cyst. The latter can be brought on by stress. She’s on an anti-inflammatory and doing better, to see if it clears up.

What I noticed today is that I am able to keep my cool when she reacts. Totally, completely not stressed about the dog going bonkers. I had no reactive episodes whatsoever. That’s, like, a first for me. There’s an element of detachment there (can’t be sharing her feelings and remain calm). But there is something else that is different about us, and me in particular. I can’t put my finger on the cause, but I’m very happy about it.

I got in some training while waiting for a track to age (before returning the track layer to the end of it). I got Amika out on lead next to the car to stretch her legs near ‘base camp’ where everyone hangs out between track activities. To my surprise, she wasn’t trying to haul me off to the nearest track. She barely had any of that head up, desperate to get there thing going. She did lots of sniffing around and I got her frizbee out so she could muck around with it (shaking it, dropping it, pawing it etc.) She was eve good about not jumping on our tracklayer (who was hanging out at my car because her hubby had hers). I think Amika was too distracted by the smells of the earth and her toy to spend enough time with her to get that far.

There were, however, other people at base camp with dogs. So once Amika spotted them I started cramming food into her. What was good was that they were at a distance where she didn’t completely loose it to start off. I was actually able to get her to reorient after a bit and throw treats in the air for her to catch. She was looking and doing some wooffing at the end of the lead wihthout getting that scary look or actually lungeing. Then someone walked a border collie past on the road, and it was too close. Fortunately, I had her lead attached to my belt, as she pulled so hard I lost my grip and she momentarily put me off ballance. I hauled her in again and stuck her neck between my legs. My theory here is that I want her body to be at an angle to the other dog, rather than straight on. Trying to cover her eyes in pointless and counterproductive – she knows it is there and she needs to see it.

She calmed down somewhat from that fairly quickly, then we had someone else head their dog straight towards us, so I called it quits (should have done that before the BC!) and put her back into the car. She continued to bark once the crate was covered, but I wasn’t fussed about her protests and she settled down quickly. She was pretty worn out.

My thought on working with other dogs around (at distance) at this stage is that somewhere along the line she is going to notice that I’m not stressed by the situation any more. As our bonds deepen, she may be able to take her calmness from me. That is, lean on my emotionally, look to me for what to do, trust me to sort it out etc. That’s a long ways off at this stage, but I’m going to keep visualising it, and keep working it at tracking.