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Anywho, on our walk this evening I decided to go a route that I've mostly abandoned as there's generally too many children playing on the play things that I want to play on (with jetson) to bother going that way. It ended up as a lovely walk. We only passed one gang of suspicious looking teenagers. We passed a young man walking his out of control golden and labrador which we went to the other side of the road to bypass,and passed BEAUTIFULLY with full attention heeling. I was pleasantly surpised at as Jetson gets very distracted by strange dogs. Then after our wonderous small achievement with again I must say it -marvelous- focus on me, we found a large group of hockey players practicing in an outdoor skating rink, so we did more focused heeling and sit and down stays with fantastic results.
Oh! And! And! Jetson can be a doorknob in the halls and stairwalls of our building (in. The city dwelling, we bounce back and forth between the apartment and my moms farm) after an incident of someone getting suprised by our presence coming up the stairway, which they reacted by screaming and running up the stairs. I have yet convinced any of the other building occupants to ignore the dog as now he is rather suspicious of people in the stairwell and halls. When we cross paths with people inside the building he will bark and the people generally stare him down despite my requests to IGNORE him, not stare into his eyes, or tell him that you don't have anything for him and thrust your bags towards him (he is not robbing you!). Today we ran into the gentleman who I have spoken with several times who is austistic Maybe-Paul-Maybe-Phil (neither myself or mike want to admit to him that we can't remember which is his name) Jetson did his habitual deep woofings/what are your intentions at MPMP as we said our hello's, I told jetson to knock it off, MPMP smiles at jetson and inquires if he should leave to his unit. I tell him no, and we continue on our conversation. I am so happy that MPMP is around, as he is the only person in my building that happily ignored him. After a few seconds, jet completely relaxed and sat politely beside me until we were finished talking. Yes! So at last we have achieved a healthy stairway interaction. Its such a love/hate experience in the city, so many wonderful things to expose the dogs to, but also lots of opportunities for negative interactions that you wouldn't expect- last week the crossing guard we met for the first time leaned over and deep voice barked at him as we were waiting for cars to pass and then told me not to walk near a guy and his lab puppy as the puppy is 'in training'. People are strange.
(I could have clobbered the crossing guard)
