We continue to work on touch with Viva

 

Here's my first post talking about Viva learning about touch In that post are some helpful links that everyone should watch and read even if you don't have a touch sensitive dog.

On this morning I was working with Viva and do notice that at any time she can leave.  When it comes to touch, she has choice to stay or leave.  If she growls then we stop the touching and we move away from her.  We also know that she doesn't like touch when she has just woken up.  Viva's growling has decreased around her being touched which is excellent progress.  I would still say that she is a dog that doesn't like to be over handled by people.  That's actually true for a lot of dogs but, we humans miss what they are telling us or we misinterpret their body language around being handled.

I was using the back of my hand and slowly stroke her near her rear and side.  Then she did this!

I then did some backhanded strokes on her side.  I always stop after a few strokes to see if she wants to move away.  Here she looked at me as to ask "why are you stopping?".

  

Here you can see what we are doing and you can see at the end she didn't like me touching her foot.  And that's ok, we are working on a fun game that involves me touching her feet.  After watching the video I opted to slow down the stroking. It's actually hard to go slow!

I do a few more of the long slow stroking using the back and whole front of my hand and then stop.  This was enough and I don't want to over handle her.  We do fairly short sessions like this - I would say no more than a minute at a time. 

Sweet, sweet Viva!

This picture made me laugh!