Good News From Odd Places

So, I run a hockey team. And sadly this week a player that was going to play for my team had to back out because our home ice would conflict with her son's. That was the bad news.

In her email, she mentioned agility and competing with her dog. In my reply to her, I mentioned it as well and asked about it. Well, it turns out that she actually teaches agility at a place called Dog on It. I told her all about my issues with Trigger and got a very surprising response - she thinks they could work with him! She also mentioned two behaviourists that she would recommend and one of them was Ivan, so this was also good. They want to help me get together a group of balanced dogs and bring me and Trigger out with Ivan so that he can see what's going on with him. They are confident that they could get me into classes and that I could get back to working with Trigger again.

This is the second person who has had absolute faith that Trigger is in no way a write off (the first was Ivan) and it makes me feel a lot better about things as well.

Things have also been better around the house with the two dogs over the last few days. Trigger still often acts weird around Cannon and doesn't want to be around her. But he's not growling at her or attacking. When he seems like he's on edge about her, I give him a "hey, quit it" and a command to sit or lay down and he is responding by doing that instead. This results in sometimes having one dog laying in the kitchen and one laying in the living room, but I consider this a big improvement from let me lay on your legs and then attack Cannon.

As per Ivan's suggestion, I've been teaching Trigger to chase a ball and he's having a lot of fun with that. I think I enjoy Frisbee with him more if only because I love his acrobatic catches, but he's definitely into the ball as well. And is definitely getting better at bringing it back and dropping at my feet. Routine, routine, routine.

Been working on the recall portion of the 4-point sit-stay. We actually need to go do a session of that this afternoon.

I'm not going to lie - I enjoy cuddling with Trigger, so I have been inviting him up on the couch so that we can chill together while I watch TV or play video games.

I feel like progress is being made.