Day 11

This morning we ditched West Coast park and went to Hort Park for our morning walk instead. The weather was good. The park was beautiful. Serene in that hour with hardly a soul around. I took a chance and let Tristan walk off leash and run pretty much free. He proved himself worthy of that chance. We passed by a few walkers. He didn't even bother. As we left, I saw a helper with a Retriever. She avoided us and disappeared into another lane, hidden by shrubs. I doubt Tristan saw the dog though and if he did, he certainly did not show any bad feeling towards "it". Fortunately(or not), Tristan is a Border Collie with very strong olfactory capabilities as far as dogs are concerned. He can literally smell dogs from afar, way before he could even sight them. This morning though, he made a good choice. :)

Our 6pm walk is always the "highlight" of the day, as NOT herding motorcycles still proves to be one of his toughest nut to crack. But this boy has done me proud, time and again. It's a slow and drawn out process, I will not deny that, but daily he reassures me in his own little way that the choice of management I've chosen is making progress, albeit ever so slowly. But that's ok. As long as it's working, as long as he gets less and less intense around them, as long as he can display some semblance of self control, therein lies Hope.

Today's 6pm walk was much more challenging than usual. It was raining. We walked in the rain and I made a really really dumb choice. I wore my flip flops which has totally no friction. None.

Thank God Tristan did not make a beeline for every motorbike that passes and so I did not slide/flew across the road in a best case scenario. Like I said, he's not completely "exorcised" of the motorcycle demon but he's trying hard, really really hard everyday ;and I can see it; to offer some other behavior other than herding the moving bike. He's trying so hard to go against his instinct. That must be mightily tough.

Good boy Tristan!

 We made it through another day! :)