just been having a wee catch up, well done everyone!!

Big Congratulations to Izzy, Ted and Cain - fantastic week for everyone it seems

Well done to everyone.

A little dog ran up to Polo yapping at him and apart from nearly treading on it he just looked a bit bewildered but didn't get aggressive. I quickly suggested to the owner she might want to call her dog before he changed his mind though.

Its funny there are places that I walk Polo where he is far less likely to be reactive than others. Any place he has experienced several positive encounters he is already more relaxed and copes better meeting new dogs.

Location makes a big difference to him.

Well done Cain! Your neighbour must be pleased as well to come out with all her limbs

Well done Polo

Well done Polo It's quite amusing when there's a little yappy dog and a bug one looking at it confused I wonder what it is about certain locations that make him more comfortable.

I think it is largely positive/negative experiences. There are two places that I walk Polo where he meets up with other 'doggy-friends' and if a random dog strays from its owner and meets Polo it usually goes well. Anything from a brief albeit tense meeting and then the dogs parting without incident or even a playful scamper.

However, there are a couple of places where Polo has been frightened by charging dogs or dogs barking furiously at him and he is very tense in those locations and ready to react at the very sight of a dog.

That's interesting. Dogs are very perceptive about their surroundings.

We have a field a stone's through from us that I used to walk the dogs around in the mornings. Since I have gor Izzy she refuses to walk there and I have resorted to carrying her on to the field until I gave up and went for a different walk!

There was a Staffy attacked a dog and its owner last week and also my neighbour got bitten by a Rottweiller recently on this field. I wonder is she can pick up tension there or am I being fanciful? She is fine to walk anywhere else and if I try to walk her there in the afternoons when we walk to meet my husband out of work she will go then but not in the mornings.

Interesting. Of course our dogs senses are far better than ours so maybe they can hear or smell something that makes them worried.

A greyhound that I walk three times a week and is normally relaxed and happy appeared very on edge and alert on a one of her walks in the past. It was most peculiar and I wondered what on earth she was concerned about. Later on in the walk there was a nasty incident involving an aggressive dog attacking another. Perhaps she had picked up on the aggressive dog's scent?

Another good socialisation class today. About 6 dogs plus two teaching dogs. Cain is still barrelling into other dogs scraps but he is trying to break them up. He's been GREAT at been non- physical. He used to jump on a dogs back, pin them down and really get involved. Now when he gets involved he goes in using barking and surprisingly clear body language and barely gets physical at all

He walked away from several confrontation and was clearly using side on body language rather than the full frontal, high tail, confrontational staring that he used to do, which is great.

For the first time we tried off lead recall in the group. Normally when we do it, all dogs are on lead and we would do an alley recall. This time we just tried it while all the dogs were dashing around off lead. Cain did THREE perfect recalls, I'm so happy I never thought he'd run away from other dogs to me.

The only problem was that our friend with the husky has copied our recall command as it works well, so when she recalled Kaya, Cain ran to her too!!!

My husband had a big achievement today

He went to a new vegetarian restaurant with me and he actually ate some salad with his meal

Seriously though Izzy has been doing very well now that I walk her with a head-collar. It makes such a difference.

Someone came over and leant over her to stroke her when she was tied up (minus headcollar) next to me the other day outside McDonalds (I had dropped Jamie off to work on his early shift and stopped for some McPorridge) and she lunged and snapped at him

If she is off-lead she will move away from people but on-lead she obviously hasn't got that option.
I apologised to him but said he really should have asked me first if he could touch her as I would have said no as she was a cruelty case and is afraid of men she doesn't know.

I bought a reflective yellow thin dog jacket today and am having printed "DON'T TOUCH" on each side and across the back so hoping this will get the message across though of course I will have to be more vigilant but this man moved up to her so quickly I didn't react in time to stop him leaning over her (which looked threatening to her).