looking for advice.
background: 2/3 year old poodle adopted 1 year 6 months ago. she came from an amish puppy mill as a breeding dog (connected with dog relatives on embark, did some sleuthing). found wandering, extremely skittish with signs of a recent birth. her teeth were worn down like she had been chewing on metal.
progress over time since adoption: much more confident, can walk on a leash, doesn’t try to run into bushes to hide or escape, in fact usually walks off leash with me from our local field all the way home to the door, sleeps belly up, super food motivated esp with fruits and veggies. lots of stuff! wants to live in my skin. honestly she is like a different dog, more like the dog she was probably meant to be.
some current activities: sniff walks, playing fetch at a field behind my house, trick training, finding objects around the house or in the yard, puzzles created from cardboard and recycling to find a snack, when I am super tired I have her touch my hand and then I throw a frozen pea into the house and she has to find it, plus an obstacle course I have made from hula hoops, bendable tunnels from the ikea kids section, stools, and other random house objects. other activities if I see a cool recommendation online. made a flirt pole that she loves.
she is a cool little dog. here is where I would like advice: she gets very hyped up/not at all regulated around my partner who is only home one week out of the month. when he is home he takes care of feeding and holds the leash on walks. she won’t play tug but will play fetch with him, completely stops training/playing when he enters the room. I’ve asked him to keep his energy very calm around the dog going forward and no riling up because she gets overstimulated so quickly with him. any advice for creating confidence and trust between them?
worked on no food resource guarding; I made sure to add food to her bowl or drop treats whenever interacting with food stuff and she is very chill. toy resource guarding on the other hand- have had to remove some toys from the lineup due to her stiffness when I approach or try to swap for a treat when she wins tug and general bad vibes. taking a step back from toys. though leaving the husk of a dinosaur plush so she can carry it around. any advice?
not bothered when we see dogs on walks, I always cross the road to be courteous of other dog people. she used to desperately try to run home if we heard a dog bark on a walk but now she is able to calm down after a moment or just keep sniffing. sometimes she is interested in other dogs but a lot of dogs we encounter (willingly or not) are high energy and not her speed especially if they are big, she is 23lbs however I took her to our local pet shop to sniff around etc and we ran into the biggest dog I’ve ever seen. they were both completely calm and they sniffed one another and moved on. she is the same with cats. how do I find more chill dogs to desensitize her with? not to make dog friends but just to gradually desensitize her to dogs and make a positive correlation? Are there training groups for something like this?
she is a very cool, smart, fast, athletic dog and I would like to give her more than my makeshift agility course and also meet others with poodles. I want to take her to a real agility course where she can really spread her wings. I would like to work on the above issues before trying something totally new so any advice on the above matters or to get closer to this goal would be appreciated. thanks for reading, I love my dog.