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Some exciting things!

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 the end of May! It's a wonderful, small facility with only women residents. I know them all very well and am so thrilled to be able to share Pierre with them. It'll just be a morning visit to see how it goes but I expect it will be great! The main struggle in this regard is getting him to Etobicoke from downtown Toronto now that he's scared of the TTC but the date I picked is a date that I will be able to borrow a car. I hope it's the first of many therapeutic visits.

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