first walk

WELL! that was interesting. lol so I took Alki on our first walk in.................a long time. probably, 6 weeks?

-we only walked maybe 50 ft. were only out maybe 5 mins.

- LOTS of barking dogs in the neighborhood. at least 2 in the complex (condos?) across the street, and several others in houses (including next door).

- it is annoying because we live right on a main road (not super busy, but its 35 MPH) with no side walk so it was tricky getting to the neighborhood half a block down (we have to go very slow)

- we did our usual, hung out in the drive way for a few mins, just getting treats & listening/watching. Alki is still VERY hyper-aware, as usual, and tense.

- we would walk about 5 feet, then stop and just hang out, listen, eat treats, etc. basically I want her to get comfortable and habituated along the way. this way she doesnt build up the entire time, getting more and more tense with each step. this also makes walks last longer but keeps us close to home at the same time, in case we have to rush back. though, at this point I dont plan on going more than 50-100 ft away from home, or being out more than 5-10 mins at a time anyway.

- things were going well, we rounded the corner into the side-walked neighborhood and stopped to rehabituate, when OUT OF NO WHERE a group of about 10 teenagers popped up. 1 VERY loud boy in particular suddenly started running down the sidewalk we were on (they were around a corner too, so neither Alki nor I had a good visual until they were right on us). Alki of course spooky barked and hackles went up. the kids kept coming at us, kept screaming and yelling, the asshole boy making remarks about "that dog" while we calmly and hurriedly crossed the street to build distance. all in all it was fine, just one of those surprises that happens. her reaction was 100% expected and normal. even for a well socialized non-fearful dog, to have a loud group of people rush you, out of nowhere, at dusk, that is scary. she and I just glared at them & shook our heads at their immaturity while I dropped treats.

- after that I was almost out of treats, so we had to follow the group back home, but maintained about a 10-15 ft distance and because they were ahead of us Alki didn't seem worried at all. she was definitely more tense about the barking dogs on the way back though after the teenager episode. she also did her normal pull away from me each time she took treats from my hand. she does this when she is freaked out/after hearing a dog bark (her main trigger). but because we kept things as low key as possible, she wasn't as bad as she can get (shrinking into the ground like she thinks Im going to hit her; a memory from me trying to break up the dog fight 2 yrs ago that started all this for her I assume). mostly I toss treats to her, or drop them on the ground.

all in all, a good walk. without the unexpected incident everything would have been totally fine, and there was nothing I couldnt explain or dont know how to deal with. I will keep walking her regularly from this point on, which will give me a much better barometer for how she does as the drugs kick in.