More walking backwards

I'm still working hard at lead training. I've found that walking backwards is still a great help when he's really starting to freak out and get over stimulated by the environment. I've also gone back to working him more on the gencon. He's less reactive to traffic on the gencon. I can't seem to get him to relax on it though. It's like I have to do as much work on that as flat collar training. if I have him on a short leash on the gencon he never ever lets up pulling into it. No wonder he hates it. So I have to do lots and lots of reinforcement now to get him to stop pulling on that and making it unpleasant for himself. Kind of makes it hard to have that as my from A-B tool. I wonder if I'm doing something wrong.

He does seem stressed when I put it on him. Even though it's put on with food. He grinds his teeth for the first part of the walk. By the time we are homeward bound he's ok.

We went back to the park this morning. Had a run around then more walking backwards in the center with him following me. He lunged at a line of mounted posties which was a shame as he'd been really good outside the sorting office the day before. But I think the difference was that he was already very excited at the presence of other dogs round the perimeter of the park and that he was on the lead and couldn't go and say hello. I managed to calm him down, put on the gencon and walk nicely home.

This afternoon we headed out on foot again. I decided not to take him in the car to see if we could lower his energy levels that way. It seems to make a difference. We went to the beach at the lido, walked along to the harbour and through the old town. I'd picked up lots of nice bones today at the butchers so he spent a long while chewing bones and farting under my desk. Lovely. Might be a hangover from being wormed yesterday. Who knows, but it's kept him busy.

Other bits of training was more 'up up' and 'off' yesterday.