A gentle slip out of the comfort zone

Earlier this summer, my wife and I adopted a dog. We live downtown, which seems to be a new environment to the dog. She’s only been interested in walking around our building: any further, and the stress becomes too much for her to tolerate. These walks have been short; five or ten minutes at most. We’ve learned a couple of things from these modest walks; that she seems to enjoy the evening walks more, and she likes the rain. We’ve also kept her walks in her comfort zone, so she learns to trust us. There’s a park a five minute walk away, including crossing a street, which all seemed to be too much for her. A couple of days ago, we needed to walk a family member in the direction of the park in the evening. We also needed to walk the dog. On a whim, we decided to try taking the dog to the park. If she tried turning around more than three times, we’d return to the building. But she didn’t; instead, we all made it, and it turns out the dog loved the park. Ever since then, we’ve started…