Willow absolutely adores other dogs. The problem with that is, not all dogs adore her. She has a lot of energy and doesn’t know how to read their signals when they’ve had enough of her, and that’s led to other dogs correcting her. We don’t want that!
So we haven’t introduced her to Copper yet in the traditional sense. It’s not because I’m worried (I think they would actually love playing together). It’s because I need Willow to change how she sees other dogs. Right now she believes that every dog should be her buddy and she gets really amped up whenever she sees another dog. That’s a dog that you can’t trust out in public. Instead, I want her to become neutral around other dogs, and only go play with them when she gets permission from me. And we practice this by lots of place time around each other. Sometimes she’ll have to watch Copper play, sometimes Copper will have to watch her play, and sometimes they’ll just hang out together like this.
This changes the conversation entirely from Willow doing whatever she wants, to Willow developing impulse control and looking to me for direction. Once she masters this mindset, her world will open up so much!