I HATE summer evening walks with my highly anxious and reactive dog

I HATE summer evening walks with my highly anxious and reactive dog

๐—œ ๐—›๐—”๐—ง๐—˜ ๐˜€๐˜‚๐—บ๐—บ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ ๐—ฒ๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ด ๐˜„๐—ฎ๐—น๐—ธ๐˜€, because Lucky hates them so much.

This weekend is all about celebrating our launch, but I just wanted a calm evening with Lucky. Unfortunately, our walk tonight turned out super stressful, even though it didnโ€™t last more than 15 minutes. Lucky already hates evening walks, and summer makes it worse with all the extra cars, people, scooters, and bikes ๐Ÿ˜ญ. There are crowds of families out earlier, and drunk partygoers later on, so it feels impossible to avoid anyone.

These days, I have to practically drag her out for evening walks, since she canโ€™t just do her business once a day. As soon as she pees right outside the building, she tries to pull me back inside. I then have to coax her to go further to a grassy area.

Tonight, while we were waiting at the traffic lights on our way back, a car passed by with an obnoxiously loud engine. Lucky panicked and desperately tried to drag me home. I struggled to calm her down while holding her still. She was so terrified, and it really stressed me out too. As soon as I let go of her, sheโ€™d yank me toward home, but I couldnโ€™t let her do that (and I did not want her to choke on her collar). So we were stuck in that corner for a while.

I was so frustrated; I almost shouted at her to calm down because I was getting emotional too. Cars and scooters kept passing by, with a man walking towards us from one side and a woman from the other. I felt stuck. We only had about 100 meters left, but itโ€™s always the most stressful 100 metersโ€”Lucky has to fight her instinct to run home while trying to stay calm for me because she knows the more she pulls, the slower we move. Every step home felt like a training session.

I really hate evening walks, and we go through this daily. Some days are better, but today was awful, mostly because of that idiot in the car making unnecessary noise in the neighborhood.

Iโ€™m seriously considering saving up to go somewhere quieter (and cooler) next summer. Lucky is doing her best, I know, but itโ€™s so hard not to get upset with this side of her. We both finally calmed down once we got home and will make ourselves feel better by ending the day with a movie ๐ŸŽฅ
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