So, after the last post, we had about one week before going on our 2 week vacation in Hawaii...a vacation that we were not able to take the dogs on. During that last week of training we were able to take Kenzie into the dog park to run around with other dogs one other time, and that went wonderfully! There were five dogs in the park when we first went in (after the initial warm-up/meet and greet through the dog park fence of course), but two dogs were in the process of leaving, so that left us with three dogs. Kenzie was having a great time talking one of the other owners into throwing the ball for her when a new family showed up. I at first was going to ask them to wait a moment before entering, to give me a chance to take my dog out of the yard, but then I recognized the dog as one that we had met many times before and I knew was friendly. I decided to risk it and see how Kenzie did with a face to face introduction with no warm up. She ran over to say hi to me, then realized that there was a new dog that she had not checked out yet. She got tense and her head and ears went up, as did Wally's, but it only lasted a second and then they were sniffing each other and then no longer interested in each other...perfect! What is really great is that a puppy went up to wally a few minutes later and did something that Wally did not like, because we all heard him shout in doggie language "get out of my space!". Why does this make me so happy? Because it tells me that if Kenzie had broken "doggie code" in her greeting with Wally, he would have responded in an obvious way, as he did with the puppy.

Now we have been gone for about two weeks, and are picking the dogs up today from my family who watched them for us. I am interested to see how much we have regressed. I am fully expecting it, but I am hoping that it is minimal, and that I can keep her from going way over threshold and us having to go back to music 24/7...I just dong think I can do that again!