Natalie Tootie

So today we went to the SRT and I was prepared with a positive attitude and low expectations. At first Kody threw a few tantrums, but he got over it fairly quickly and they were milder than yesterday.

While we were resting in the shade, a beagle and his mom approached us. Kody spazzed out, but not too bad. The woman started talking to me and Kody didn’t scare her away. He was shy around the beagle, but quickly settled into just laying in my shadow. The beagle laid down as well. We talked for a long time and Kody was great. The beagle smelled Kody’s butt and Kody didn’t bark. Later the beagle did a play bow invitation to Kody. Kody didn’t react right away, but about 30 seconds later, he did an obvious set of play bows to the beagle and some higher pitched happy barks.

I was very happy. Not socialized my ass. He just takes a while to get warmed up.

And by the end of our walk he was pretty much adjusted to the new harness and comfortable not pulling. His reaction to this was the same as his reaction to the Cesar Millan way of controlling a dog by putting the collar higher on the neck, which also worked for me. But this way people don’t think I’m torturing my dog, well, less people think that.