Sightseeing

We have come to the realization that we have not been taking Hershey out enough into busy areas of town. It is important to expose her to all sorts of situations, people and environments so that she can get used to distractions, and not be so nervous.

We went on a few longer walks this week - Chris took Hershey through the valley and creek, and we've been getting better about taking her on evening walks in the neighborhood. Yesterday we took her on a city walk - to the farmer's market and down to the temporary library location. She was pretty good but did bark at some people who approached her, and tug when there were other dogs around. All things given though, it went pretty well.

We are really looking forward to starting dog school in two weeks - we are working on some of the habituation tools that our dog teacher has suggested we try. We've had mixed results. Our poor friends were our first real guineypigs yesterday - it wasn't great, but we don't really have a baseline to compare it to. We're going to keep trying with other generous souls, and hopefully Hershey will get better and eventually grow out of this cranky stage.