No Confidence

This isn’t about Lukas really, but about myself.

I’m proud of Lukas’s progress in training. His sit is almost reliable (it’s at least reliable when he’s focused on me), loose leash walking is improving, he knows to be patient for a few seconds when I ask him to “wait,” etc.

He’s about four months old (he’s 17 weeks, but was born on Aug 28th so it’s actually “4 months” in a couple days). So he’s certainly in a good spot for his age… I think.

I have a friend who I’ve known literally over half my life now, and I’ll call her C here. Her dad is a vet, and she’s lived with dogs/various animals her whole life. She’s been around even more dogs than I have and currently owns five! She’s my age, but fairly experienced with dogs. She said I’m doing well training him, so I was glad to hear that from her.

Today, the Petco here had a $10 seminar on “jumping up” — no one else came, so it was more like a private session! Lukas did great and caught on quickly. I have taught him for me to sit instead of jumping if he wanted me to pet him. So I think that helped, since when he saw that he couldn’t get treats by jumping, he’d sit or lay down. Well, basically, he had kind of a head start since I did work on getting him to not jump before. But the session still helped greatly, I think! Especially since I’m bad at asking others to help, and it gave me a better idea of how to get other people involved.
The Petco trainer said I had a really smart, good dog. Many times. I was glad to hear that, too.

But I have a huge problem with confidence. I know Lukas is doing well, but I’m worried that I’m not on the right track, going too fast, going too slow, or that I will get off track soon.

I’m worried about his socialization, with people and with other animals (of any kind). I know how to do the socialization– but the problem is with me! It’s so hard for me to reach out to people to ask them to help with socialization/etc. Probably because I have social anxiety myself. So sending someone a message like “Can my puppy have a play session with yours?” or “Can you come play with Lukas a bit, but not let him jump or mouth your hands?” is more hard for me than some people, to put it lightly. The biggest problem is getting people who are willing to help socialize by playing with and petting him, but asserting that they can’t let him jump just because he’s cute. I’m having so much trouble asserting that with people. I do say out loud that I can’t let him jump, I’m trying to teach him not to, but I am just being ignored.

I don’t know. Basically I have a lot of training fears, but mostly about myself. Lukas has been giving me hope often, and everyone says he’s well behaved. Still, I worry.

But I guess that’s just what I do with everything.

The picture here, I took after asking Lukas to sit. I was hoping he’d keep looking at me too, but he looked at one of my family members– he didn’t break the sit though, despite the distraction, so I got this picture! (I may have asked him to stay also, but I don’t remember now.)

Anyway, that’s my post for the day, I suppose. I’m not sure if I’ll try to update daily or just when I think of posts, but we’ll just see how this runs.

Long story short on this post, I’m just a really anxious person and need to get past that.