I was worried I would find this one frustrating since there were so many elements with similar tones, but I really enjoyed putting it together. It was complex enough to be interesting and had enough unique elements to be fun.
Has anyone been to Caribbean Night this season? We're traveling with friends and would like to take them, but I heard the set up changed this year. Is it still a buffet at a set price?
We've worked SO hard, and my boy has been doing really well lately. We were walking this morning and passed a couple in their front lawn. My boy saw them and turned to me, because he's trained to look to me when he sees things that would normally make him react, and I joked, "Oh, you get something for that? Yes you do!" and gave him a treat. The couple laughed, and I told them he was trained to look to me when he saw people. One of them said I'm doing a great job with him and mentioned their dog is crazy. I told them he was a year ago, so there's hope if you work at it.
Later in our walk we passed a woman with a small dog. My boy struggled a little bit to keep his focus on me, but he never barked and managed to pass without incident. The woman smiled while we worked to keep our focus, and she told me he's doing so well.
SO proud that our neighbors are noticing how well he's doing! We are almost 2 years into his training, and he still has his moments, but our lives have gotten so much more peaceful.
I really enjoyed completing this puzzle. Not only is it adorable, but it has the bright colors and unique sections that make a puzzle the most fun for me. I've been puzzling a lot lately, but this was my favorite recent one, and I think it's going to be put on the wall.
My boy has been doing a lot better, and it has been a while since we had a real reaction to other dogs. Until yesterday. Yesterday was the perfect storm. We took our usual walk in our neighborhood, and we saw most of the same people/dogs. He is good about looking to me and keeping his eyes on me when I ask him to, and that's how we get past other dogs most of the time. Sometimes he might whine a little, but that has been the extent of his reactions for a while.
Yesterday, he was already tired when we were making our way home. Someone was standing on our street with 2 loud beagles. The beagles saw him as we came around the corner (probably 600' away) and began baying at him. The guy who lives on the corner is a dog lover and was coming out with treats for the beagles, and he saw us, so he started to walk over to my boy with a treat. And there was a woman standing there talking to the owners of the beagles. We greeted the man with the treat, and my boy did really well with him, though he was already a little amped up from the beagles' baying.
We started to try to walk past the beagles on the other side of the street, and they were barking and lunging so frantically that I couldn't hold my boy's attention. He turned to lunge, and I pulled him away. The beagles' owners also finally started to pay attention to them at that point and began walking the other way. The woman they were talking to came toward me saying something, but I couldn't hear it because the beagles were being so loud. I said I couldn't hear her, and she waited til the beagles moved away. Then she started to say something about the weather. I was still trying to get my boy fully calmed (no longer lunging, but his hackles were up), and I engaged a bit but was clearly distracted. She casually said I should stop him from lunging because he's big. But the beagles aren't a problem??? As calmly as I could, I told her he's a good boy, but the beagles were screaming at him and he took offense. The woman didn't say anything to that, and we went our separate ways.
I'm counting yesterday as a win. He lunged once and barked once. Those beagles were out of control, and if some lunatic was screaming at me on the street, I'd probably react worse than my boy did. I like big dogs, and I've had them most of my life, and I find it frustrating when people act like little dogs being aggressive and barking and lunging isn't a problem, but it is a problem if my dog responds. How do others respond to this double standard?