proud

I'm so proud of Wombat. I think she's finally starting to understand that other dogs aren't a threat. Yesterday we went down to the creek at the peak time for people to be walking their dogs. We saw a small dog coming towards us so we went on another part of the trail and ended up with another small dog coming towards us. There was a small grassy area next to the trail so I just pulled Wombat over and figured we'd keep walking towards them as far as we could and when she got stressed I would just do the usual stop and sit her and scratch her under her collar (ready to grab her by her collar if she lunges forward). When we got to the point where Wombat started stressing, we stopped and I went to sit her but she dropped into a laying down position (she's NEVER done that around another dog-- she's even awkard about doing it when we command her to do it at home). I just did my usual scratch her neck and praise her for laying. She just lay there until the dog was a bit past us and she had to jump up to turn and to be able to see that the other dog really was walking away and not planning an attack from behind. Today we were heading down to the creek a bit earlier hoping for less dogs. While we were on the oval before getting to the creek trail a dog started running up to us from the trail. I called to the woman to call her dog but she ignored me (twice). I figured I'd get Wombat ready for meeting the running dog. I looked down to grab Wombat's collar and she was already laying down! I scratched her and praised her while the dog came up to see if it could sniff her. The dog even went out of Wombat's sight while it sniffed my leg but Wombat stayed laying down. The dog then ran back to it's person (who had started calling it by this point). I gave Wombat lots of praise for her good behaviour (I really wished I'd brought the treat that I had intended on bringing in case we had this event happen). Laying down is supposed to be considered a submissive position. Even though she's not rolling over on her back to expose her belly, I'm sure even the low position she's in makes her a bit vulnerable so I'm hoping she's doing this because she's starting to realise other dogs aren't really a threat and she's now starting to attempt to meet or play with them. Hopefully she'll keep up these behaviours when meeting dogs.