Well, Betty does have her ups and downs, but I think we've made the turning point. She's beginning to feel more confident in herself on our walks. This is helping with her fear aggression problem. Hopefully instead of increasing, it will now start to decrease, and hopefully decrease to zero, as I would love to have her in competitions.
Todays walk started on a more anxious note, she really wanted to get out there, lol. And she was hard to control, as she was pulling. But I started on the Stop and Go drills, where whenever she started to move ahead, I would Stop. She didn't like that, lol. She wanted to Go, lol. But after a short while, she still would pull some, but was more managable.
Then we got down to the trail, and there were a lot of dogs there, lol. More than I expected, lol. But that was a good thing, as I was able to try and work with her fear aggression problem. Then we got to the area that has a lot of trees. I began working on her handling, circling trees, etc. I kept moving and turning, forcing her to keep her eyes on me, and if she didn't, she would get a pinch from her prong collar. We worked on that at a walk for about 20 minutes, then upped it to a faster walk for another 30 minutes, then a jog for 15-20 minutes when I was ready to fall over myself, lol. She did very well, and is now beginning to watch me more, rather than her wanting to lead.
Then the walk home was awsome. She heeled perfectly for 30 minutes. She walked about 1 step behind me, and when I stopped, she sat at my heel. She's never done this before. She did try to pull in front of me a couple times along the way, but I gave a small snap of the leash to get her attention. It wasn't enough for the prong collar to pinch her, just enough that the sound of the chain links tightening slowed her back down. But overall, it was near perfect.
Well, tomorrow is Betty's next class. Will give you an update on how that goes. Hopefully it's even better than last week, even though last week she did Awsome. Will keep you posted.....