Second weekend home · Arsenal Canine Nation

Second weekend home

Ozzy did amazing during his second weekend home. It has become obvious to me that he knows the commands and knows what he needs to do, but is just a stubborn teenage boy at times. It is a lot more fun to stick his head in the snow than walk beside me, lol. I can't blame him as he is part Husky. But he gets back on track quickly with our patience and consistency. His loose leash walking is amazing. Not perfect by any stretch, but we are getting there. He still likes to consistently get ahead of me, but he gets back in line with a correction. I give him lots of "free" time and sniff breaks in between concentrated walking to heel. His time in walk to heel before losing focus is definitely getting longer. He was much better at "place" on park benches this weekend. He went to place easily, but did not stay very long. We tried some "under" at park benches, but he was not so interested in complying. A large breed puppy walked by him on the path while we were close by in the grass in a "down" and Ozzy had zero reaction. A short time later, we walked by the same puppy on the path and the puppy lost his mind at Ozzy so Ozzy reacted in turn, barking and lunging at the puppy. I gave him a high level stim and he snapped out of it immediately. We saw a lot of other dogs on the walk from several metres away and he was absolutely calm and had no reaction. The improvement in his leash dog reactivity from before training is night and day. The experience with the puppy at close range I believe was a good one because it was not a high risk situation and was hopefully a big learning for him. I am still nervous to walk directly by any adult dogs because I don't want to stress him out or give him a chance to fail before he is ready, but we'll get there. Ozzy reacted to dogs a couple of times (excited barking) while we were parked and in the car and the dogs walked by, but one mid level stim was all that was needed to snap him out of it completely and become calm. Video of one of our weekend walks attached and some photos.

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