If you want to meet a dog who's a "real character" let me introduce you to Starlight. She's a little Yorkie/chihuahua mix with a big supply of sweetness and fun waiting for her lucky adopter.
Before Starlight came to PAWS, she had little or no experience with meeting new people or other animals. At first she cringed and trembled when anyone would approach her PAWS kennel. After several months of kindness and encouragement from all of the volunteers and staff, Starlight has learned that many people can be trusted, and she now eagerly greets her PAWS friends. And once you are in Starlight's good graces, she has lots of cuddles and kisses for you.
She has come a long way since her arrival at PAWS in the spring, but Starlight will need to continue her training after she is adopted. Her main problem area is meeting new people, and this is the focus of my work with Starlight as her Pet Partner.
To prepare her for learning to calmly meet people, I made sure that Starlight was consistently following several commands: look, come, sit, and down. Now, when someone wants to meet Starlight, even if she is misbehaving (barking, lunging at the person, etc.), I can redirect her attention by telling her to LOOK (at me), then COME, then SIT, then DOWN. Starlight's bad behaviors nearly always discontinue after she begins to obey the commands to get a treat. This redirection process has been working when Starlight reacts to animals, too. Starlight tends to be interested in friendly interactions with other dogs who are calm, but sometimes she will react to other dogs, and she can be calmed by turning her attention to her handler to obey commands for treats. Starlight can also be redirected this way when she reacts to a nearby cat, too!
I have been taking Starlight on "field trips" to practice being around people she doesn't know and to occasionally meet new people who are willing to go through the training steps we are still following in this context. Sometimes we go to a coffee shop to sit outside at a table near the door, and Starlight is learning to calmly watch people enter and exit the shop. We go downtown to sit on a sidewalk bench near a restaurant or the library, and we watch passersby. We go on the PSU campus to watch people pass by as we sit on a bench on a mall. We go for walks in all of these locations, too. In all cases, Starlight is very well behaved until someone asks to pet her. Occasionally someone will reach out to her before I stand up from a bench and get a chance to explain what's up, and then Starlight will react quickly, lunging and barking. Sometimes those people walk away without a chance to get to meet our little "sweetie." But if I am standing and I can convince the new person to ignore Starlight while we humans begin with a brief chat, we nearly always have a great encounter. I explain that Starlight is still learning to meet new people calmly, and that we should begin with a friendly conversation while ignoring her. I tell them that Starlight will probably begin to sniff them during this conversation, but they should please wait to pet her until we go through a few more steps. After just about two minutes of this conversation, I have Starlight demonstrate her "tricks" -- the commands listed before plus asking "what does a dog say," after which she barks. This is always a favorite, and the new person is usually quickly taken in by Starlight's charms. After a round of Starlight obeying commands for me, I hand several treats over to the new person, who then gets to give the commands and treats. By this time, Starlight is usually calmed enough to be petted by the new person, and the only thing they still need to be careful of is sudden movement, including standing up from the crouch they've probably adopted in order to get down to Starlight's level.
There are three other things I have been working on with Starlight. She still needs practice with "leave it" and "wait" (my version of "stay"), and I am still gradually increasing the amount of time she stays in a crate with the gate closed. We have been working on these things during field trips to my house, where my own dog, Mimosa, is my training assistant, and where my cat provides some practice for Starlight to be calm near a cat. I have also started to take Starlight and Mimosa on walks together. Mimosa weighs 70 pounds, so they are an interesting-looking pair next to each other!