Moon Has A Lot To Teach Me Part 1 Choosing

I am learning so much from Moon. She is teaching me the art of patience, allowing, slowing down, not getting my way, and that my agenda is not hers. I mean this in the best of ways! These are all traits I need to hone and having Moon around is helping me look at myself and to tweak my expectations and the way I look at life in general. This is just one of the many benefits to fostering rescue dogs.

Two of my fellow foster parents have written wonderful teaching blog posts since going to a Kathy Sadau workshop together a few weeks ago. I have been learning a lot from reading about what they learned and every time I read something from the new thoughts and practices vs old school dog training I am astounded at how the new information and ideas inspire me and feel so right. I am so fortunate to be fostering Moon at this time because she is the perfect dog for me to practice what I am learning and she shows me every day where I can do better, be more creative, and to think outside of the box. I was so intrigued by a game to help build confidence in a dog that is all about letting the dog choose that I decided that I would try and continue that theme by letting Moon choose many times in 1 day and I would see if there were any shifts in her. To see other posts on  this very theme please see The Special Box, Hobbs Chooses Again, and Magic Treat Box.

Moon has really come along way with riding in the car from the terrified and even physically ill dog she became when riding in a moving vehicle. Moon is crated in the car for safety and one area we are working on is getting her out of the crate when we get to our destination. She wants to come out but she is nervous and conflicted. We can see that she really wants to come out but just doesn't feel safe about it. Reaching in to a crate to pull a dog like Moon out will do nothing more than break any trust we have earned from her, not to mention could incite a nip or worse a bite (most dogs do not do well feeling cornered) so we have a system and it is working. We attach a light leash to her harness before we put her in her crate now that we drape out the door so we can easily get it and this way when we need Moon to come out of her crate we are not risking her escaping by us in fear if she did decide to bolt. When we get to our destination we take the crate out of the car and set it on the ground with the door open and we have her leash in hand. We DO NOT pull her, she gets all the time she needs to make the choice to come out of the crate. Again pulling her out would only make her not trust us. When she is ready and feels brave she walks out on her own. This is what we did when we arrived at our hiking spot on Friday.

Waiting for Moon

In less than a minute Moon chose to come out of the crate. Yay Moon!

Moon has been with us two weeks now and she has come a long way from that freaked out little girl we picked up from her transport to our care. Initially she did not like the feel of a harness let alone the tension of a leash. Early on we understood that to work with her on leash and just get her to walk we needed to make sure as best we could to not let the leash tug at her or pull at her, if it did she would go into freak mode and try to bolt. When you think about it, the feel of harnesses and collars and leashes attached to a body must be a very odd feeling. I know if someone harnessed and leashed me up even to guide me, in the beginning, especially if I did not know the person I would not like it either. Here is a picture from our first walk with Moon 2 weeks ago.

It is easy to see how uncomfortable she was.

So on this hike Moon got to choose a lot. Pretty much everything, the pace we went, where she wanted to walk, in front, on the side, in back of us. She got to stop whenever she wanted to sniff for as long as she wanted, she got to take us down a different trail than we might have planned on. It was her day and there was magic in the air.

Notice the difference? Tail up and and Moon really got into smelling her surroundings. This made us so happy!

She loved this moss forest as much as we did I think.

Moon wanted to check out standing on this log, tail still out from that tucked position she had it in on that first day on leash.

Alert, curious, gorgeous! You can see the transformation she is making in just two weeks.

More curiosity and healing....

In this video clip you will see Moon meet Moss Lake and again we are just astounded at how inquisitive and brave she was feeling this day. She was choosing so many options for herself, and we enjoyed where she was taking us.

In this next clip, which is one of my favorite clips, you will see Moon show a little apprehension about checking out a stream off the trail. She had to actually go down a hill to it but she did it, all her choice, we did not encourage or discourage, this is all her. She then stops in the trail and so we stop too. You can just feel her brain is unwinding, there are just all these choices for her, continue down the trail, smell a plant, go back where we came from, what to do? Then to our amazement she even ventures down the other side of the trail where she had to stretch the leash out all the way, putting lots of pressure on it and pulling but she was so curious it seemed to redirect her from the feelings of not liking the leash to pull.

Since this will be a three part series I will end this post with getting back to the car and the choice Moon made for the first time. Normally she has been a bit fearful of being near the car and getting her back into her crate meant we had to pick her up, which she can be a little hesitant about, and then getting her into her crate she normally would go in willingly from our arms. But here is what she did to top of her day of choosing, luckily I had the video camera in hand and realized what was about to happen so I got it recorded!

Moon all snuggled in after her day of choosing for herself.