On the road with Langley

I am very much a home-body. I love hanging out with my dogs, putzing around the house, doing my rescue work, etc. So while Langley's been with us, most of the work we have done is all at home, in our yard, or on walks in the neighborhood.

Dogs need more than that though. The more they are exposed to, the more resilient they are to life in general and goodness knows, Langley could use some resiliency. He's such a good boy but it doesn't take much to get him to completely lose his focus due to anxiety.

So on Thursday, off we went to Langley's vet to do some practicing in the parking lot. The office is located at the back of an office building in Northeast Tacoma, Browns Point Vet Clinic, and because of the location it's pretty calm back there with very few cars coming and going. The one distraction we didn't think of were seagulls. Since the office is just about a block from the Puget Sound there were plenty of gulls flying over head and you know how Langley is about birds...

My goal was to keep Langley under threshold. That's dog speak for keeping his anxiety under control to the point that he can focus on things other than his anxiety, like toys, treats, and most importantly, me.

First we started out in the parking lot with kibble in the Green.  At first this was an exciting game but then a lady with a cat carrier came out and after that, it took beef liver to hold his attention.

Next we tried a Nina Ottosson puzzle called The Brick. Mind you, this is a puzzle that Langley knows well and typically is pretty systematic in getting each and every piece of kibble out of it. You can see in the video that having to think through this puzzle was pretty tough for him with all the distractions but he did manage to do part of it.

Interspersed with the toys we did some sit, down and spin cues. Again, Langley was able to focus for the most part but it was definitely a challenge. 

At this point I should have probably packed it up and called the day a success but I decided I wanted to see if he could handle doing the puzzles or green next to the front door of the vet. It was slow and there were no animals inside so he managed pretty well but I had to bring out the big guns and use full size hunks of beef liver instead of kibble for treats. That did the trick. It was definitely a lot tougher for him to focus on me even with a huge hunk of liver in my hands, but he was somewhat able to focus so I decided not to push it any further and on a good note I took him back to the car and gave him a hunk of freeze dried tendon in his crate. Chewing is a great way for dogs to relieve stress so ending a desensitization exercise like this with a yummy chew is a wonderful way to finish up the session. It's a high end reward for a job well done and the same time a great way for dogs to self soothe.

When we got home Langley and I were exhausted so he had some crate time and I went downstairs to curl up on the couch with 2 dog warmers (aka Hobbs and Frodo) and a blanket and get some computer work done. From start to finish, including the drive, it took less than 30 minutes but because both of us were having to focus so intensely it was pretty mentally tiring.

Langley, settling in for a little crate time