Pet Sitter Job in Lanesborough, Massachusetts

I'm Carole. My dog is Sophia. She's a Jack Russell mix. She's active, happy, loves people of all ages and walks. She'll walk for miles if I will. When she gets a chance to walk and share some time with us, she's pretty relaxed at home, comfortable, well behaved. When she doesn't she pees on the couches, can't stop jumping around, and has too much pent up energy. Not really surprising. Sophia's about, maybe, 8 years old. She's a rescue dog who is definitely older than we thought she was. We've done a LOT of training with her, and she responds nicely to her name and is just a snuggle bug. However, she has many many many of the signs of anxiety, despite how much they've lessened over the years we've had her (4). She tenses up when she sees other dogs and does not hear ANYTHING we say. She jumps and pulls at the leash, runs around us and has to be picked up or we have to move ahead very quickly and drag her along. When she feels she's out of danger, she'll go back to sniffing and walking. If the other dog is still visible, she'll stay elevated though she can at least hear and follow commands. If we're in the car and she sees a dog, she'll bark and pace and jump. If the window was open, she'd jump out of it to get to the dog. I did some training with her to get her past the anxiety with other dogs. She was making progress, but I couldn't find places to do it with her where I could count on people having their dogs on a leash. Every place we went we'd get a good start, then some fool would show up and let their dog off the leash. The dog would come running over to us and Sophia would try to attack it. When I paid to go to the house of a trainer and work with her and her dog, or a volunteer dog, Sophia would make progress. There just were not enough times that I could schedule (and afford) to do that. I worked with friends and their dogs a few times, but the process is pretty boring and people just didn't want to do it as often as we needed. I did a pack walk with the Eleanor Sonsini group, and Sophia was really elevated the whole time. She pulled and really made my arm and hand sore, but she was able to walk for most of it, surrounded by dogs, as long as we kept moving. I had some trouble because the pack walks didn't happen at regular times, so we didn't get to follow through with it, but I think those would be a great way to go. I'm still working on it. So here we are. Unfortunately there are too many days when her walk comes later in the day and it's shorter than we'd like it to be. She's been a pest lately as a result and she needs some attention. If we could get her a mid day visit, even up to 2:00, a couple of times a week, she'd be so much more centered. I'm open to suggestions about how to help her, and I'm looking to get her a visit and walk twice a week. Carole