Today Levi Made Me Very Proud

I wanted to share a little story from today because I was exceptionally proud of Levi. For some context, Levi is currently in training and we’ve been working on holding commands until he’s been told his release word. He’s pretty good with it in quiet environments but we’re still working on it in busier environments. His recall is similarly good when there’s minimal distractions but it’s not perfect. He’s also a fear reactive dog. He can be reactive toward strangers but he gets especially stressed with unfamiliar dogs. By that, I mean he will lunge, bark, growl, and snap at unfamiliar dogs to get them to back up and give him space. He had this issue when I rescued him in August.

Today while we were at the park with my mom’s dogs, the three of them were running around off leash. Both of my mom’s dogs are unreliable with recall but there wasn’t anyone else at the park when we arrived so we thought it would be okay. All of a sudden a man with two loose small dogs appeared from behind a building. My mom’s dogs both took off toward the two dogs and Levi went to follow them. I yelled “Levi no! Come!” and Levi stopped and ran back to me. My mom ran after the other dogs while I leashed Levi. We were lucky that all of the dogs were friendly but it was our mistake that this situation occurred.

Once I had Levi leashed, I saw my mom was struggling to grab both of her dogs. I wanted to help so I told Levi to sit and once I felt like he was giving me his full attention, I let go of his leash and slowly walked away from him. He was about 20 feet away from everyone so he had enough space but could see what was happening. I helped my mom grab her dogs and then looked back at Levi to see him still sitting where I told him to. He was whining a bit, I think trying to communicate that he was nervous or unsure, but he still did what he was told. He held this position for maybe a minute or two which isn’t long but I was proud of him for listening in a situation that made him so nervous and unsure.

I wanted to share this story because I was so excited to see our training pay off. I know that we created the problem but how Levi handled it was just so awesome.