Bluehealer

I wish we had nosework in Canberra. It sounds so fun! We had a fantastic weekend. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous - clear, blue skies, no wind and lots and lots of sunshine! I took Colby on lots of walks to new places and we had NO incidents at all. All the dogs we encountered were either on leash or far enough away not to be an issue. Such a relief! Today we got a bit lost checking out a reserve I had never been to and we ended up walking for 2.5 hours! Neither of us minded though because the views were spectacular, the weather was lovely and it was so relaxing and peaceful. Will come back later to add a pic. Yesterday was 6 years exactly since Colby came to me from the pound! Here he is checking out the view from a mountain near our house yesterday:

Nosework sounds great fun! Yay for Malcolm! And thanks for the link! Question - does anyone here have more than one dog? Like one "normal" dog and one reactive dog? If so, how do you exercise both together? I am thinking of getting a second dog (we used to foster rescues and weirdly, Colby welcomed any and all of them into our yard to play but he doesn't like meeting dogs outside his territory) but I'm worried it will learn reactive behaviour from Colby or that I won't be able to take it to the dog park or off leash areas because I can't take Colby to those places and he might fret if he bonded with a new dog and we left him at home. We had a lovely labbie cross for a few years called Billy and Colby and he were great mates. Billy was an adult when we rescued him though and he was super chilled. Colby got a lot of confidence from him on walks. Sadly Billy died of snakebite a couple of years ago and Colby has been an only dog since then.

Thanks Thistle! Teaching bow sounds fun, how do you do that? Colby can sit, stay, drop, fetch and high five and I'm working on targeting. Would love to teach him to bow though! I took him for a walk yesterday evening and thankfully we didn't come across any roaming dogs. I have a real anxiety about them as they seem to be everywhere in my suburb and they always make a beeline for us. I never take Colby off lead in public, even though he has excellent recall. But we have been monstered by off leash/stray dogs in the past. Anyway, we did come across a man and his tiny jack russell cross who started barking and lunging at us from about 30m away and as they got closer Colby really started to get stressed (whining, a bit of eyeballing, stiffened posture). I moved us away and got him to look at me and gave him lots of treats and he didn't try to rush the other dog, which is certainly an improvement. I was able to keep his attention mostly on me and even though he was quite stressed, we both came through it with no problems. Yay!

Thanks everyone :) Here's a pic from today of Colby showing how pleased he is with his new bed :)

Here's Colby after his walk yesterday. It's been very wet here!

Hi all, I'm new although I've been lurking a while. I have a quite fearful stumpy tail cattle dog called Colby that I am working with. He's reactive to other dogs on leash if they get too close so we've pretty much always avoided other dogs on walks. He's about 7 years old now and I've had him for 6 years (he was a foster failure - rescued from a rural pound). We are having a lot of success with clicker training and have just started weekly group classes with a local behaviourist. Last Sunday was our first one and I'm pleased to say he focussed on me the entire time and completely ignored the other dogs, even when one barked and lunged at him. As his confidence grows, so does mine and I am enjoying him much more now that I have tools to combat our anxiety!