Day 1
I'm trying to start out by following the advice from the Ted talk in my last post.  I'm supposed to write down 3 things I'm grateful for and journal about one positive experience.  The exercise was supposed to be walking the dogs, but we went to the park and had a rough time with Dante, so there wasn't too much exercise involved.  I will be walking the dogs daily, though, so that should help.  Then I need to meditate and do a random act of kindness.  Not necessarily in that order.

1. I'm grateful for Dan listening to my worries about taking Dante to the dog park and having Dante get scared and snappy.
2. I'm grateful that Dan is ok with me finding my own way to (or from) the church without pushing me.
3. I'm grateful that I could stay home and have a nice day with Dan.

I came home from the dog park today and I felt like kind of a failure.  I'm trying to make sure that Dante and Virgil get enough experience with other dogs and people that they'll be able to calm down when we're out and about.  Though I really thought that the park was more for Virgil than for Dante.  Dante seemed to be doing great when we went to the park the past couple of weeks.  He'd run and play with the other dogs and mostly only had a problem when he was on leash or behind a fence, but there were quite a few dogs in the park today and a lot of them were bigger than Dante.  And one particular husky who seemed very pushy.  She got Dante pretty scared and he started snapping at the other dogs and growling.  I got them all separated with help from their owners and we walked around the park some, but then that same husky came back to try to play again and got them all riled up again.  At that point, I decided to leave, but I felt like I had failed because I've been trying to have experiences for Dante where he wasn't scared so that he could calm down in stressful situations.

So I came home and I talked to Dan about it, and he told me that I had done a good job today.  That I had realized that Dante was overwhelmed and got him out of the park so that he could calm down.  At first he told me that he was proud of me, and it made me feel better, but I still had feelings that seemed unresolved.  I kept talking about them and Dan talked about how I didn't let Dante get scared and snappy.  That was when my good feeling that I had gotten from Dan's compliment went away.  But Dan was able to tell that I had gotten scared and he was a very good listener.  I told him that I had allowed Dante to get snappy and I talked about my fears of not being able to help Dante be ok with other dogs and my worry that Dante would always be a lot of work to have around.  He was able to keep from solving like he sometimes does and allowed me to work through my worries.  He also reassured me that even though Dante had gotten snappy, he still thought I had done a good job at the park.  I'm very grateful that he has helped me understand that when you grow, you always make mistakes.  I'm hanging on to the tenuous belief that I am doing the best that could be expected with Dante and Virgil, even though I'm afraid that I'm doing it all wrong sometimes.  I'm grateful that Dan believes in me, even when I'm not sure he should.

I also noticed that Dante and Virgil checked each other to make sure they were ok after the first time the dog pack got riled up. It really warmed my heart to see them acting like a real pack even though Virgil is still plainly too scared of Dante to play with him when we're at home.