Week 1
Week 1: learning to rest
She could not settle anywhere, so that first week was not about training but about rest and safety. That I had been awake for thirty hours when she arrived did not make it any easier.
Read Week 1 →Coco and me
Coco arrived below zero. Not at zero.
A working cocker who had not been treated well, who hardly ever got outside and trusted no one. Everything on this site was built during her recovery. Not theory from a book, but what worked for a dog who had to learn to trust again.
Every week I write up one part of her story: what was going on at the time, what I tried, and what went wrong.
Where she came from
What had happened before she got here
This is not background for atmosphere. It decided where I had to start, and why ordinary training tips did not work for her.
Her past
She was not treated well
I do not know exactly what happened. What I do know: she had learned that a hand coming towards her can hurt. And that a crate was not a safe place but a place where a shock could come at any moment.
How she arrived
Hardly ever been outside
Cars, cyclists, other dogs: all of it was new and all of it came at once. Getting out of the door at all was an undertaking.
What that meant
No base to build on
There was no calm, no trust and no experience. Every exercise I came across or read online assumed those were already there.
I watched it happen, before she was mine
I knew Coco before she was mine. I looked after her now and then, and that is exactly why I saw what was going on. Not all at once, but every time she came back there was a little less of her left.
She started out as a puppy who wanted to learn. Everything I showed her, she picked up. What remained was a dog who was distant, stressed and permanently busy. Indoors she never settled, and outdoors she only pulled on the lead or ran circles. I was almost embarrassed walking her down the street.
What stayed with me most: everything she knew, she had learned from me. And even that did not hold. Something I taught her one time seemed to be gone the next. That is where it started to make sense to me: a dog who never gets to recover in between holds on to nothing you teach her.
I did not start with what she had to learn, but with what she had to let go of first.
Her journey
Week by week, in order
One part a week. At the bottom of each part you find the explanation it leans on, so you can apply it to your own dog.
Next part
Week 2 is coming
From pulling to walking beside me. Not with a correction, but by working out what going forward had been getting her until then.
Want to follow it from the start? Every week I send out the new part, with the explanation alongside it.
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