After a reasonably quiet week at home, yesterday we made an effort to get out of the house. We went to Stanley Park in Blackpool, for ice cream, scooting and feeding the ducks.

We had a lovely morning really but as always for us in public places we had to cope with Toby’s massive fear of dogs. He did get a bit better for a while but in the last few weeks we have gone back to proper tears and panic whenever he sees a dog, and if one happens to bark near him we’re on for a full meltdown.

We do our best to reassure him that he’s safe, that the dogs are on leads or being controlled by their owners but he is genuinely terrified. Last week we tried something new to try and keep him calm and stop the panic – when we see a dog coming we start counting slowly and calmly, and keep counting until we have passed and can’t see the dog any more. This is helping to a point but like I said, if a dog actually barks then we will be back to square one. If anyone has any ideas how we can help Toby overcome his fear then please do let me know. I’m not bothered if he still doesn’t like dogs (neither do I really) but I just want to help him stop being so scared.

He might have been scared but he still looked like a dude though…

Anyway, after we’d negociated a lot of the dogs that were near the cafe we made our way down to the boating lake to feed the ducks and swans. We actually remembered to bring bird seed this time too. Gabe loves ducks – and he’s actually started saying duck now rather than just quack quack! He was so excited when they all came over after he’d thrown the seed. I reckon if we’d had a big enough tub he would have stood there all day…