Normality

I've blipped this bridge numerous times before, often with Arlo, but I thought a nice easy blip was called for today after yeterday. I had been asking him to put his feet on the side a couple of times, which he did, then without me asking moved his feet up to this central pillar to get even higher. Did he know it would be a better photo?

The deserved double praising today though... quite understandably, he fell out with the vets after an operation last year and wasn't happy when he returned for his vaccination at the end of last year... whit ya gonna cut off now ya bams! I'm running out of bits!! So since then I've been taking him almost every week for a special, and more importantly free, session with a vet nurse who was training to be a behavourist. 

It began with mat training, which we had already introduced a few months earlier, but used in a more general way. If we want him to calm down, he lies on the mat. Over a number of weeks it became his default place to go where he felt safe. She would ask him to come up and sit in front of her while she got him used to being touched, sides, ears, scruff of the neck, then introduced a stethoscope and syringe. If it felt uncomfortable, he would go back and lie on his mat, before resuming. If he had enough, he would go and stand by the door. She would never push it too far, he loved Carole and her gravy biscuits. She loved him too, she was off work with covid and had been thinking about him. I also began muzzle training with him, again with biscuits, very slowly, and if you rushed you'd soon know, and then repeating it in our sessions. Last week we decided he was coping with it all and we planned to introduce the vet today with a practice vaccination run, but when we arrived they asked if we could just do it for real. He was very excited to have another person to fuss over him, but he stuck to his routine as she checked him over, went to his mat when unsure, then to be safe, put his muzzle on while getting the jag, which was no fuss and we didn't need it. Success, yeehah, what a good boy.

Despite happy with us touching him in all these places at home, the last attempt was without us being present so we didn't get to see what he was like, although could imagine. I don't doubt most dogs have no issues with such routine things and why Arlo is like this we are not sure, but he can react to the minutest change in an environment and usually predicts what might happen next and react accordingly. These many sessions have been invaluable in helping us deal with various situations even if we don't always get it right first time. It's also been hugely rewarding to learn all this alongside him and try to think how he thinks.

Yes, I could have cut all that blah blah and just said Arlo got his vaccination today, end of story, but hey, it was much more of a journey than that :-)

Wait, am I on holiday tomorrow? Fab, wait am I on holiday on Monday too? Double fabs, right I'm offski... you've kept me blahblahing too long....