On the Road with Langley: Dealing with some surprises

Langley is full of surprises and on this trip we had some great surprises and amazing successes when we went on our outing to Blueberry Farm park.

This was our third outing and in true Langley style, it just took two trips for him to recognize a pattern to my "getting ready to go on a car trip" behavior. As soon as I opened the closet and grabbed my totebag he got very worked up and excited. The best way to deal with a dog like Langley who discovers human behavior patterns way before I ever do is to switch things up on him. I'm not especially good at this advice since I'm very much a creature of habit, so when Langley's excited barking and spinning let me know that he was getting overworked about going out, I changed it up. After packing the bag, I set it on the table, put him in his crate with a chew toy and then sat down at my laptop for about 10 minutes. In that time he settled back down and actually fell asleep. PERFECT! Now we could start our outing.

So off we went in the car and I decided to take a big chance and go through the drive through to get some coffee on my way there. Langley was crated but the crate door faced the side window so he could easily see out. To make matters worse, we get to the drive through and there's a repairperson working on a sign one shop down. Oy! I was stressing out but decided to try anyhow and would you believe it, Mr. Langsters was cool as a cucumber. Not a peep out of him, even when we pulled up and I opened the window to talk with the barista. Frodo could definitely take some lessons on coffee shop etiquette from Langley.

Off we went to Blueberry Farm Park for our second visit, curious if I'd see any change in his comfort level. I pull up and there was a dang Puget Sound Energy truck. The driver was in the cab having lunch. Again I assumed that this would get Langley worked up, even though the guy was about 20' from where we parked. Langley definitely noticed him but instead of barking, he chose to head the direction of the rotten apple tree, a much more pleasant option in his mind than barking at a strange guy. I spoiled his plans for an apple buffet and headed on past the tree down to the grassy side area. We did the occasional cues of "check-in" and "touch" to make sure Langley was still able to focus and not over threshold but he was doing great.

Tongue flicks - whether barely noticeable or even a full on lick like this - are a sign that a dog is uneasy

I'm not saying he wasn't stressed. There were lots of signs of that. His usually sleek coat had thrown up a bunch of dandruff, his movement was jerky and sudden, and he had a stress poop (forgive me in advance for having to watch the poop bag swing on camera throughout the video below. ) On top of that he was giving lots of the signals that he was worried: tongue flicking, sneezing, full on nose licks, stiff tail, pacing, shake offs, circling... While I don't want to overly stress him, I do want to push him a bit outside of his comfort zone. The trick is to not push too far. While Langley is a bit beyond where I'd like him, stress-wise, at this point that is about as calm as he gets outside of the house. So for now, I'm just making sure he's still checking in with me and able to connect and run through a couple simple cues. We also keep the outings pretty short so he isn't stressed for long.

Panting is another sign of stress as is teeth chattering. Langley chatters when he's over threshold but luckily there was no chattering on this trip.

After a walk full of sniffs and lots of birds, we headed back towards the car while things were still going well. The utilities truck had left but now there was a police officer parked even closer to us, watching for speeders. We took it really slow as we headed back to the car because Langley was pretty concerned about the car and the radio noise coming from it. He was doing great - no barking or anything. Then just as we got about 5 feet from our car the cop started his siren and took off after a speeder. I held my breath because the noise had even startled me. Langley froze, spun, and then did a shake off but no barking. He knew the jackpot prize of the tendon was in the car at this point so I think that helped him overcome the startling development of the police car.

At this point I should have gone straight home and not pushed things. He was chewing and all was well. I decided to stop at the post office though and figured the tendon would keep him distracted. The good news is that there wasn't any barking or extreme freaking out but when I got back to the car he was finished with the tendon and obviously pretty stressed. Dang! I just undid some of the accomplishments of the trip by pushing him too long. On the way home I pushed little bits of beef liver through his crate at traffic lights, and he seemed to relax pretty quickly and was almost back to his normal energy when we arrived home.

I am SOOOO proud of Langley. He had 4 novel situations that he had to adjust to: coffee drive thru, utility truck and driver, police car and siren, and finally being crated alone in the car at the post office. He was able to be resilient enough to manage all of this and still be able to do some fun tricks when we got home before he had a nap in his crate. Langley's path has been mostly baby steps for the last 10 months so when we get a big step forward like this, I am very proud of this brave guy.