After last night’s incident, today Lucy has been geting very minimal attention. This has led to a small struggle – especially when she is ouside of her crate. When she is outside of the crate, Lucy just wants to be pet and loved. She really insists on it. So in order to avoid that insisting pushiness that she practices, when she is outside of the crate, she spends her time either in the down command or in the place command. Her desire to have somebody pet her and pay attention to her is so strong that it causes her to shiver. This is just her struggling with controlling herself. She has probably had less affection today than she has had since arriving.
Since the snap came as a result of Lucy not wanting to leave the crate, we practiced crate drills. She learned that when I ask her to come out of her crate, that she has to leave. When I ask her to go into the crate, she must do it. Additionally, when she is outside of the crate, the door to her crate is closed. This keeps her from having the freedom to go in at will and having more issues. This is one way that we are working towards a permission-based training relationship.
We took another walk to the end of the driveway today. She did much better. I hope to finish the week out walking to the end of the driveway and begin going to the park next week. Lucy is always noticeably happier after a walk.
I am going to include before and after pictures of Lucy’s ears at the very end of this post. They are doing incredibly well. In fact, I have decided to give her a break as far as spraying them goes. Since I’m no longer spraying them, she is no longer needing to shake her head. This should help the wound on the outside of her ear to heal more quickly too. I will take this time to actually work on her skin and get it to heal up more quickly – I hope.
