Don't tell my dog that I'm a mess

Many of my posts, including the most recent one, are riddled with anxiety and pessimism.  It kind of skews things when all I track/worry about are his problem behaviours (which are honestly quite minimal) as well as the things that I'm struggling with in dog training. A couple general positive updates about Pierre: I've found off-leash trails to be a great space for him to meet other dogs as he seems most at ease when we're walking on a path and not just standing around and staring at him. He seems to be most uncomfortable being trapped in areas (i.e., fenced in dog parks) with too many dogs. He's unbelievably friendly and most of his pulling on the leash is now out of genuine excitement about people and other dogs and very rarely due to frustration/anger.  His relationship with our cat is going great; he responds really well to "leave it" if we can see that she's stressed  He's going to be visiting the long-term care facility where I work at th...

"this is an exhausting read" I've had to adjust some unrealistic goals. Actively working on training has been put a bit on the back-burner because Pierre isn't much of a risk to other dogs anymore, my job takes up so much of my time and energy, therapy dog work isn't  realistic at this point for a variety of reasons, and my co-dog-parenting partner and I are not always going to be on the same page (nor can I expect him to have the same intensity or obsession with this that I tend to have). I always envisioned a dog that would have a high toy drive when I dreamed about adopting and Pierre does not have this kind of drive. His main motivators are his people and being outside, and then to a lesser degree food and toys. I've read about working to create a motivational toy which we could do, but we aren't planning on competing so this has been a fairly passive process. I use games of tug and other kinds of play as a motivator for little bursts of regular ...