• Not an easy pill to swallow but things moving backwards are part of the parcel IME. Try not to think of it as a failure on your part or something more wrong with the dog and remind yourself you're very much in the still figuring stuff out phase (which may last a while!).

    Regarding crate training and sleep i'd put this at the top of the list and forget about other stuff until you've had a few good nights sleep. When we hit the wall after 6 months we reached out to a therapist and the first thing they had us do was stop going out (because park walks had become to stressful) and focus on getting some rest/keeping Nori calm. I though that would be a nightmare but we're lucky enough to have a garden and it helped us find a lot of simple ways to keep her entertained without walks. We did lots of kong's puzzle games and sensory stuff and if i was in your position i'd be doing all those things in the crate to build positive association. Get good bedding as well, in the end we went with an old duvet and she loves burying herself in it. I'd also consider limiting the areas the dog can go in as it's a new house. Upstairs was out of bounds for at least a couple months.

    On bad experiences with dogs be aware that can stick with them a while so after an altercation above a growl or bark you might want to consider street walks or non dog areas for a few days.

  • Thank you, some encouraging stuff in there - we've been keeping walks small and functional and keeping her downstairs on the whole so good to hear it's along the right lines! The concept of "emptying the stress bucket" we've heard about seems to fit with our experience with the dog so far.
    We're lucky in that the intense experiences with other dogs weren't aggressive, it was play, but now Daisy just wants to be near other dogs as much as possible. When we get to longer walks we'll be back to limiting exposure to others as much as possible.

    She's just snuck back into her crate for a snooze!!

  • Daisy just wants to be near other dogs as much as possible

    Pah, i thought you had real problems! Great to hear she's taking to the crate, i pulled the door of mine after 6 months and Nori still spends a lot of time in there by choice. They're denning animals after all.

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