Hi Julie,

   Hello, the pest again! I was thinking last night when I went to bed about why we had the pen in the first place, and why we made it so small... it's hard to tell from that session i sent, as this was our all time best ever CAT, with no behaviours to show Jedda's usual attitude to "people other than me", which is why I loved it so much :-), but this is in no way typical of her former behaviour, or what occurred in the CAT session following. Quote from my post:

>>>>We had our 14th Cat session with Jedda yesterday, it was slightly less than satisfying as she went back to pinned ears and nose stuck out whenever Kate got closer this time. Should we have increased the distance again to stay just under this level of reaction? Kate said she very much felt this was not aggression directed towards her, but "stay out of my space you rude person!"  When I reviewed the video it didn't look as bad as I expected, but Jedda wasn't nearly as engaged in the process as during the previous session.<<<<

    Jedda before CAT was completely uninterested in getting anywhere close to other people UNLESS THEY HAD FOOD, in which case she'd bring herself way over her threshold to get the food, then freak out and have no idea how to get herself distance from them again without her driving them away. Just being that close even without 'interaction' caused her tension levels to ramp up second by second till the explosion.  So when we started CAT in a big pen, decoy with no food, well, that was fine with Jed, she could stay as far away as possible and completely ignore the decoy for half an hour no worries, nothing to shape, decoy getting really bored, the distance was already sufficient for Jed so no reward in giving more distance. The only way to get her into the process to start it was to confine her so she had to interact JUST below the threshold, then we were away, and as you can see it has worked. (To this extent anyway, not saying it couldn't be done a lot better ;-D, if I really knew what I was doing.... )

  RE no tape at all, when the hooftrimmer tried to clip a rope on her halter she took a swipe with her teeth and kicked out at him as she whizzed past, so my niece's safety is my priority, my brother may not be pleased if I let Jed damage his youngest daughter!

   Re getting closer each approach, she's like those dogs on the CAT seminar that reacted to 2" closer, and I'm trying to keep that nice attitude going without pushing her over, I was thinking that consistency for as long as it takes would give her more trust in the process, to let her control the distance as she could know where Kate will stop, and Jed would have to think about how close she can put herself and still offer friendly behaviours. I know I'm putting a lot of trust in Jedda and her thought processes! but she's always responded best to being given choices, except in this one area she didn't until now know she had a choice to walk away.

  Please keep feeding back, as I know my ideas on this may not be the best way for us to go about it, so feel free to disagree :-D, hurry up snail mail so Dolores can join in!

Love,
Laurel and Jedda