The tricks are going well, Kenzie is finally "sitting pretty" on her own, it took her quite a while to have the confidence to try to balance herself. I am still working on a really strong paw swiping over the eyes/nose, I call it "shy?". She does it great while lying on her side, but we are working on it while sitting or standing now. She has "say your prayers" down! I think that is her favorite trick as of now, it is really cute.

Oh, so new news, I had to go pick Max up from his adopted family...=(  This is the little guy who had been deemed unadoptable, then we fostered him for 8 months (in which time he bit no-one), and then we found what we thought was a perfect home for him with a terminally ill woman about 30 min away. Well  it turns out that there were some things not reveled to me about her lifestyle and health issues that made Max not appropriate for her as a pet. So he bit her while I think she was pulling him off of someone else, and now she is afraid of him. So I picked him up on friday. She said that he was getting worse instead of better (which of course he was, since he was not being aggressive at all when she got him). So I took him back with me. I was expecting to have a very stressed out puppy on my hands, but he really wasn't. He is pretty chill, and has not so much as raised a lip at the other dogs, which is HUGE.  So anyway, I am now taking him back to square one of people reactivity training, and we are going to be using the BAT method. He is getting clicked for having the courage to look at the guest right now, and that seems to be working well, because he actually tries to trick me by turning his head toward the guest, but not looking with his eye balls! Silly boy. But this tells me a lot, that it is difficult for him to look at the guest. He is a lot more uncomfortable than he seems (his mo is to run up to guests and roll on his back to be petted, but then gets spooked and turns into attack mode). People think, oh look how friendly he is! But really he just needs to be ignored until he is comfortable enough to ask for his head to be petted (then if he does get scared, he does not feel trapped like when he is on his back). Anyway, he is being a really good boy so far. I was afraid that he would be back to square one, peeing all over the house and attacking my dogs again, but he isnt! WHEW! lol

Oh, and I got my large stuffed dog! It is FREAKY!!! It feels and looks like a real dead dog. It worked well for my reactive client, we were able to see of the dog was friendly and was just a frustrated greeter, or if she was actually afraid and reactive. It turns out she was just a frustrated greeter, which has totally different training than reactive dogs, but the behavior looks identical (crazy barking and lunging at end of leash). So that was pretty cool. I will be using it tomorrow in my reactive dog class, doing BAT.

Oh, and other new news (boy I am just full of it today!) I took Kenzie to her first agility trial this weekend. It was indoors and pretty large, held in an arena. It took us about 2hrs to get in the doors, doing the zen down when she started to get stressed. Once we got inside she did not do too well, so we left for about an hr. When we came back, she was much more calm. We were actually able to get all the way inside, and settle on the outside of the ring and watch the dogs run, while surrounded by other dogs! That was sooo cool. I could not have gotten there though without the "zen down". It worked wonders to help her trust me to protect her.