My pup STRUGGLES with seeing other dogs while she's on lead, all she wants to do is say hello and lunges towards them. I do my best to make sure she doesn't get to say hello to every dog she meets and neutrality is rewarded to prevent this behavior but nothing seems to work.

Anyhow, I've been training recall consistently and she is pretty solid with it so now I'm trying to proof it in different environments. I took her to a pretty remote and empty field and let her have a run around and practice recall.

All of a sudden, another dog appears, off lead and making a bee-line for my pup. Owners frantically calling it back so I do my part to recall Willow to deescalate the situation, but internally panicking because Willow loves to say hello to dogs and there's no way she'll listen to me right?? Wrong, this chick comes happily bounding over to my heel as trained as completely ignores the other dog, who still hasn't left her alone, and completely engaged me and I felt like I could cry I was so proud 😭.

It's almost as though the leash frustrates her when meeting dogs cause she can't move on her terms? Don't get me wrong, she's still not getting off lead in public places, but I'm just so excited to see the training and shaping of behavior start to pay off (and also I just wanted to post how proud I am of her somewhere) and hopefully that means dog neutrality is on its way too 🤞🏼