Improving confidence

 I have now had Lucy for exactly 2 years! Heres the photo I took of her the first day I had her: 

As you can see from the photo, she has always had a tentative cautiousness about her. She was 11 weeks old when I took her home and 'sickly' because she had special care needs the first couple months I had her. As a result, her socialization started late. 

Today, I took her and Tucker to Coastal, Home Depot and Petco! We walked all the aisles. Tucker is more outgoing by nature and Lucy picked up on his energy and was copying him.

I've always called Lucy a "fake guard dog". Sometimes she will bark at people when she firsts meets them. Sometimes she's completely friendly. Sometimes she doesn't bark at all. Sometimes it seems like a protective thing, other times it seems like a confidence thing. She's definitely not fear agressive and would never bite someone. 

I love this dog so much!! I just want to be the best dog owner I can be. I can definitely help with the confidence thing, especially by taking her to new places with good experiences. Maybe if I spend more time with her and REGULARLY  take her to new places, that will help her confidence. I definitely saw her be extremely confident today when she was imitating another confident dog!!! Here are the happy puppies: 

Proof that Lucy made progress in one day:

At the end of the day, we were at home and the neighbors were out and at first she barked at them. And they were like come here baby really friendly etc.  THAT ALWAYS MAKES HER BARK MORE!!! I don't know why but the more people try to approach her, usually it just makes her bark more. She is most comfortable when people are disinterested in her and she will then freely approach them. She doesn't like it when bew people approach her. And guess what the heck she did??? She worked through her fear and APPROACHED THEM LICKED BOTH PEOPLE AND SAID HELLO.

This is amazing because once Lucy enters bark mode, it doesn't stop until the person stops being friendly. Then, she will be friendly by approaching when she's ready on her terms. Yeah, I know my dog is a weirdoooooo. But I love her and I wouldn't trade her for the world. But now that I've stumbled on a confidence booster (Tucker and other confident dogs!), I'm going to commit to taking her more places when there's another confident dog present she can take her cues from.