Timken Hits The Town....Part 3 Visiting A Public Park On A Busy Sunny Day

On our way home from our walk in the town of Snohomish we went right by Tye Lake in Monroe, WA. It was such a beautiful day and Timken was all rested up from his short small town walk that we thought it would be fun to introduce him to another place to walk that our dogs love to go. This is a different type of walking than our trail walks. There are lots of active things going on. There is a small lake with a path that goes all around it. It is a 2 mile walk all the way around but half of that goes along a fairly busy street and also by a skateboard park. We like to walk the quiet side of the lake. The path goes right in between pasture on one side and the lake on the other side. There is still plenty of action though, with runners, dog walkers, strollers, kids and adults on bikes, and people walking in groups talking. There are also people fishing and then there are lots of birds, including ducks quacking, red wing black birds, and oh yeah lots of goose poop. The dogs don't seem to mind the goose poop like the humans do, <grin>.

There is also a playground and there were lots of kids making kid noises. We decided to walk by the tennis courts and then by the playground with Tim to see how he reacted. He did good! He was taking it all in, and we could tell it was all so new to him. He walked along and sniffed things and watched the movement of the people. He didn't growl or bark at anyone or anything. He was a bit anxious though as I could tell by the yawning (another appeasement signal he was throwing and letting us know he was a bit nervous) he was doing in some of the video I recorded. But again, he did really well for the amount of activity and the newness of the environment to this boy.

In case you are interested, here is a link to a Canine Stress Signal Dictionary from Whole Dog Journal.

In this video we had just come from the parking lot and were making our way past the tennis courts on our way to the more populated area where the playground is. You can hear some kids in the back ground. Also if you notice, Tim is walking along then hanging back, he is nervous and he whines a bit. But all in all he is doing pretty well.

Sniffing the grass and getting to know the place. Also there was a lot of people/kid noise here. This didn't seem to bother Tim.

Timken seeing another dog and he didn't bark or get squirreley, good boy!

Looking good Tim!

Foster dad are we going to be walking by those people?

Here we go, I liked that Tim just walked on by the kid and his family. This kid was squealing and excited to see the dog, Skip was with me, but neither dog paid him any attention. It was a good test for Tim.

The kid checking Tim out.

And then another person coming from the front. Of course if you have a dog who is used to this none of this looks like anything, but this really was a lot for Timken, everything here was new. Smells, sounds, movements of strangers.

This video you can seem Tim yawns twice. Also you can notice he gets a bit spun up but we decided to just keep going.

People ahead.

We walked by these people and he used his avoidance technique to get by.

Time for a rest with foster dad and some reassurance before turning around and heading back to the car.

Here Tim stops to smell some goose poo and then a person walks by on our left and he stays on the right to avoid them. I am good with this, I was so happy he was able to feel like he could avoid the things he wasn't sure of rather than be reactive as an alternative. Who knows? Maybe someday soon he will actually enjoy going for a walk in this big area, until then we will just keep working on it with him.

Back at the car Skip gets a drink.

Dave putting the water dish in Tim's crate worried him a bit but he didn't mind drinking it off Dave's finger. Kind of a slow way to get a drink of water though! :)

Big day for Tim, he walked around a small town, then a public park. When we got home he was happy to see everything was just as we left it and he was no worse for the wear. His recoup time has really shortened. Stay tuned for more adventures as Tim will be visiting a dog friendly coffee cafe in Seattle in a few days. He has a small fan club who will be joining us and we will even have a foster dog update to report as well.