#scared dog

Emma is so smart & has so much more confidence now, and she's so interested in training time. We did nail trims this past weekend & she actively came over where Jack & I were working with the others & wanted to be involved. She was easily nosing the clippers in exchange for a treat within like 3 lured times. I moved to gently taking her paw & while she doesn't like that & retreated once for a break, she came right back within a couple seconds.

Also she's had a general jump forward in trying new things lately - she deliberately went to cuddle Jack with me present for the first time. She watched me the entire time, which was funny, but it was such a surprise. She's also been enjoying Joel petting her back & shoulders lately, and she did a back-of-couch lick attack on Arte for the first time last week, which was VERY cute.

We've also started doing "Adventures" where we purposely let her out the front door to the front yard - always when I'm already out there, so she can go find me, zoomy the yard once or twice, then go back inside. Our thought is that it helps familiarize her with the front yard a bit more and gives her a routine to ending up out there - circle the yard, go back inside. So if she gets out by accident sometime, hopefully she'll be more likely to hang in the yard long enough and know the next step is "go back through door". So far she's calmer about her zoomy in the yard, so we think it's working decently so far.

It's a risk, yes, but we do have a very quiet street, and we figure the controlled practice is an acceptable risk to help set her up better for a potential accident/ emergency if something happens. I do need to get my fucking shit together on harness and leash training though, sigh. She just has more bad associations with harnesses, etc from having them forced on her, so it's rather harder to retrain than the brand new scratch board, tooth brush, etc.

Look who's doing great with her vet desensitization training!