Just a hint of courage and a yellow ribbon.

I’ve talked about Freija’s anxiety before, and how difficult it is for her to meet strangers. These past couple of weeks I’ve noticed a bit of a new development… Girly girl has been going up to people voluntarily to sniff, or even be petted! To put that into perspective, it took her over six months to build up the courage to happily sniff and follow our agility class trainer. Can you imagine my sheer surprise when girly girl goes and parks herself at a complete stranger’s feet, and is quite happy to be stroked and made a fuss of? Make that a tall male stranger, which has been her number one worst nightmare up till now?? That NEVER happens!

I’ve also noticed a little change in attitude from dog owners approaching us since I tied a yellow ribbon to Freija’s lead. They know not to let their dogs pounce up on her and to just take the meeting very slowly and peacefully, so none of the dogs involved have any cause to fear. Not everybody knows about the yellow dog scheme of course, but those that do are a great help to us. Basically if you see a dog with a yellow ribbon, or perhaps a special yellow vest or lead with a warning, you shouldn’t approach it without permission. There’s any number of reasons for using the yellow ribbon – we use it to signal that we’re still practicing our social skills and I tell other dog owners this so that we can make the encounter calm and not too frightening for girly girl, but some use it when their dog is in heat, ill, or on fear-aggressive dogs… It could be anything, so unless the owner gives you permission, stay away.

From the Yellow Dog UK website

Off-lead situations are another matter of course. I don’t let Freija go off lead during walkies, there’s no safe space to do so around where we live, it’s all busy roads - besides which, when I have let her go without a lead on special forest hikes and things before, she’s simply trotted along beside me so there’s hardly any point! But the one place she is let off lead is at agility class. We’ve just started our fourth course which has a couple of new members in the group, who aren’t familiar with us or know that Freija is still working on her socialization. One is a large, excitable short-haired collie. As we were about to do a run of the practice course, this cheerful big lad runs up to us for a sniff and tries to get girly girl to play. My heart does a leap at this point, usually I’d expect a snap and panic from Freija, she’s not great with surprises like that. That didn’t happen – instead she just watches the collie, has a bit of a sniff herself, and turns to me as if to say “let’s get on with training, shall we?”. My jaw could’ve dropped clean off.

Could it be that we’re really making progress? Will Freija be the perfect city-dog when we move to Bath? I wasn't too sure before now... But dare I say, I really think it could happen! :)