u/Hermit_Ogg

A stranger who lives across the park waved at me yesterday while walking her jack russel terrier, our Alisaie's arch enemy breed. She stayed a good 20 meters away from us (thank you!) and shouted over that it's really nice to see our dog barking less than before. I just shouted back something about lots and lots of training, because I was quite distracted at the time - keeping Alisaie chill when her arch enemy was that close took a lot from my brain.

The stranger veered off and I started turning our dogs home. Despite the (relatively) close encounter, Alisaie had her attention on me, occasionally turned to sniff something, then turned back to me. (Our non-reactive dog was of course glued to my side in the hopes of treats.)

It's quite difficult to really see how much progress you've made, when you train the same dog day in, day out. Incremental, tiny steps of progress blend into each other. Getting a direct "she has improved!" from a stranger was very validating!

(We're using The LAT Game and other counter conditioning measures, plus BAT 2.0 without a trainer at the moment, since our dog school shut this city's branch down.)

Multi-Tool, Alien, Brown with Claws, Green Crystal, "Ismanov's Impulse Generator"

Exotic, Red and Gold, Chevron, Royal, Small wings, Single Thruster, "Tebashib's Folly RS2"

A noticeable reduction in reactions

Alien Multi-Tool (green/red), Budullangr Galaxy