Where are we at?

"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 trick performance but that's about it and it only works inside.

A big problem I have to address is letting go of the concept of perfection and letting go of these make believe deadlines that I created in my own head. Raising and training my own dog is challenging all these micromanaging tendencies that I didn't really realize I had as well as my emotional, quick-to-frustrate nature.

"I don't know why you're always so dramatic everything is great"

Our main goal right now is to slowly re-introduce Pierre to using the subway. I did this successfully, somehow, when we first got him, and he was doing fantastic. Unfortunately, when P and I were visiting pals in Eastern Ontario in February, we went under a CN rail track just as a train went by overhead. It really traumatized him and he has generalized this new fear to any kind of train sounds. I made the mistake of trying to just push through it after a couple weeks.

 As if you can rationalize with a sad baby dog.
"Oh look we're just going on the subway and now we're at High Park can't you see that we're at one of the best places and the subway was necessary to take us there??"

It's been a hard couple of months for me with scheduling and being a human in general so I have put this aside to deal with later. I know I have to implement a slow, progressive plan to ween this guy back into TTC land. I bought hotdogs during my last grocery trip and today we did a fun series of training that culminated to going to the subway station, in the first set of doors and getting a bunch of hotdog pieces and then leaving. He was really stressed about being in the station itself, and I think I lingered there too long for him, so we have to start a bit further away next time and try again.