October 10, 2013

Absolutely no progress. I’ve been taking A.J. to a personal dog trainer. I’ve been working with him. I’ve tried everything on our walks. Nothing is working. No progress at all.

We went for a walk this morning. He did pretty well. He didn’t pull very much, and when we walked past a house (on the other side of the street) where a dog was in the yard barking, A.J. barely reacted at all. That sounds like progress, right? Then I took him to doggy day camp. He spent five hours there. Five. Hours. … Five. He played hard the entire time.

After we got home he reacted to a dog on TV. I started working with him and he ignored the TV dog. So  we got in a good training session. Again, it sounds like progress.

We went for a walk tonight. It was going to be a short walk since he was (supposedly) pretty tired out. We went to the end of the street and turned the corner. We were well more than halfway to the next turnoff when a man with a little dog turns onto the sidewalk coming towards us. He didn’t even slow down, so we had to turn around. A.J. fought turning around a little.

We went across the street to our usual big empty parking lot. A.J. was still looking for the dog that was behind us. We walked to a part of the parking lot where we could see the man and dog walking along the sidewalk way across the street. A.J. started to react. We turned around, he turned with me, and he started to forget about them. We turned back, he started reacting again. We turned around, he started to calm. We did it again, same thing. I turned him away, then we stopped, with me hoping he could stand and regroup for a moment. We turn back, he sees man and dog, and flips out.

He was useless from then on. We saw a woman with two dogs a little bit later, and he pulled again, but didn’t flip. He continued lunging and pulling periodically the rest of the way home.

He doesn’t get tired. He doesn’t wear out. He doesn’t calm down.

I’m so frustrated at this point. We work so hard and it seems like we make some progress, then we hit a spot like this that feels like we’ve made absolutely no progress at all.