Desensitization to New Things

Sitting on an aluminum dock, Old Forge, NY

This past week my human brought me up to the Adirondack Mountains in NY. He exposed me to a variety of new sights, sounds, scents and situations. Initially, this aluminum dock made me apprehensive to walk on, but that apprehension quickly passed and as you can see, I was able to walk out on the floating dock.

I also went on many hikes, but my only issue is pulling on leash, even though we did a lot of work correcting my pulling habit. Hiking was very therapeutic for me and as I became more tired and exposed to loud noises from walking beside a busy highway, eventually I became less startled by the loud tractor trailers, and other traffic passing by.

There were plenty of geese and deer that I encountered and my human didn’t need to worry too much regarding my behavior toward them, since we were walking whenever we encountered them. I was deeply engaged in scent tracking before I saw them. Each night we walked at the park on the lake and there was at least one doe there and although I was very interested, and I pulled on leash, I was easily corrected.

I met several people and continued to exhibit untrusting behavior when there were too many people around me or approaching from behind, but noises are beginning to be less of an issue outside—although they remain an obstacle indoors for me.