Mischief Monday - Hope to reduce this with Project Hailey

I am calling it Project Hailey. It is my attempt to work extra had with Hailey to help her with her issues. The issues I am hoping to address are her anxiety and her pulling on walk. These are things that are always on the back burner but I am kicking it up a notch because Hailey's anxiety increases over the spring through the fall and in the fall she is going to be spending some time with Grammie and the Big Guy while we are traveling.

The Project so far contains the following pieces.

1) Increase Lee's exercise (physical and mental). We have been having our big walks even though it has been raining every day. I got myself a fantastic rain coat to make this better. We are also doing more walks in the woods (tomorrow we will share our yard). I am also working on ways to build commands in these walks. Things like climbing the picnic table. In general, we are just trying to be outside more! And of course working on training in the house.

2) Walking nicely. I am experimenting with getting her to walk better. I bought an Outward Hound hands free leash to make our walks nicer. The issue was when not in her harness, she pulled so hard she broke it (it is fixable fortunately).

The view when she is pulling of the harness

The harness we have she can step out of, which isn't safe, so then I had to buy another harness. I got a Lupine no pull harness. This harness is excellent. So excellent, I have ordered Phod one (with Hailey not ripping my arm off, I didn't notice how much Phod does pull). I have yet to try the new harness on the hands free leash. We are trying one thing at a time. I hope these things will help make her a better walker so my parents to hate me the whole time I am away!

Lee modelling the new harness, and yes I got one that was the same pattern as her collar!

We will keep working on Project Hailey and hopefully help get our girl into the best place she can be.