This is a bonus episode: A recording of a live Q and A.

Join Annie Grossman for a live Q and A most Thursdays on Instagram @schoolforthedogs.

Get alerted about the next one or ask a question in advance at http://schoolforthedogs.com/qanda.

She also sometimes goes live to answer questions on Clubhouse. Find her there: @anniegrossman.

Here, Annie talks to an SFTD client who has a young rescue dog who became frightened about going outside after some bad experiences on walks. The owner has been bringing the dog to off-leash time at School For The Dogs in NYC and wants Annie's thoughts on bringing him to the dog park.



Mentioned in this episode: 

Dog Body Language course available at http://schoolforthedogs.com/courses

Lili Chin's book Doggie Language https://amzn.to/3cpAO1e

Sue Sternberg's dog park app 

Learn more about off-leash offerings at School For The Dogs at SchoolForTheDogs.com

Dogs under 5 months: https://www.schoolforthedogs.com/services/puppy-playtime/

Dogs over 5 months: https://www.schoolforthedogs.com/services/school-yard/

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

So Katie with her dachshund mix. Katie wrote:

I got three-ish months old Sunny on January 13th and he has settled in swimmingly. He’s happy go lucky, playful, but overall, very calm and observant. One standout example. When a stranger came in the house briefly, he all blinked at him. He only barks in the mornings to get out of his crate. He’s crate trained and he sleeps for around eight hours every night.

The issue: he was with foster mom on a farm before coming to be in Brooklyn and was increasingly skittish on our initial walks to the park. Note, he was on pain meds from his neutering at first.  As days oere on and pain meds wore off this continued. So I started picking him up and walking him to the park. Eventually he didn’t want to go outside at all.

We had a couple of unfortunate incidents that may have sped up the snowballing, including spooky home alone, where the passers-by, and one Pitbull that got a little too close sending Sunny between my boots and then yelping like a car alarm. I tried using treats, but after day five of growing anxiety, frankly, on both of our parts, I stuck to a pee pad in our backyard and we’ve since had great success with him going on command on the pads, both inside and outside.

My question, how soon is too soon to hit the sidewalk and or the park? He’s had two rounds of vaccinations and we’re going to puppy socialization class at School for the Dogs on Monday.

But again, she wrote this like a month ago and she just wrote me a little bit of an update. Let me see if I can find it, but I did also invite her to come on to chat here.  So earlier today she wrote...

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast

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