“2 reactive dogs go for a walk” - our next adventure

When we planned our next walk, we knew we wanted to wait until the Easter school Holidays were over so our chosen destination was quieter.

The point of these walks isn’t to push our dogs to their limit, it’s to expose them safely and slowly to new places and new experiences.

We chose the beautiful Evenley Wood Gardens for our walk because there’s plenty of space and all dogs have to be on lead - meaning we knew we wouldn’t have to deal with off-lead dogs rushing us.

One thing we’re always conscious of when we plan these walks are that they’re not walks where one of us can just hold onto both dogs at any time so we have to plan things like toilet stops & ticket purchases etc. we left the girls in the car while we sorted out tickets the went back to get them.

The first thing we noticed is that when we got them out of their respective cars, once again there were ZERO reactions. Not a whine, not a huff, not a lunge… nothing! They looked at each other, shrugged & carried on. This isn’t something that either of us will ever take for granted! We don’t push them, we respect their space and we make sure both dogs are comfortable and as relaxed as possible at all times.

As with all our other walks, we were blown away by how well they did! And even more astounding and beautiful this time was they seemed to actively look for one another if they went out of sight or one went further ahead/was behind. And this wast in a “omg there is a dog, stand guard and get ready to react”

Way. It was in a “oh, where’s my pal” Way - it was really sweet 😍

Our dogs needs are different. Rosie can walk past another dog most times without reacting if she’s not too uncomfortable or in too much pain. Cheery can still find this hard at times. But every walk offers us new learning opportunities, we learn more about our dogs and it’s not only them who grow in confidence. These walks help us as their guardians. We learn what they can cope with, what they still find hard. We keep learning the smallest of signals, the subtlest body language signs and with each walk our bonds and relationships grow stronger and stronger 💛