I forgot how easy it is to train tasks. A lot of times with Ganther and now with Darby I have noticed that I'll say I don't have time to train or work on tasks with Darby, but then I find often times that all it takes is a few minutes and they pick up on the cues super quickly and want to work on things. Training over the long term and keeping things consistent does take a lot of time and work, but the initial training often seems daunting, but dogs are a lot smarter than we give them credit for!! Just watch this video of Jenny shaping Darby with a box!!
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Class was cancelled today, so Darby and I started to work on some things this morning! One of the tasks that is important but not commonly thought of is the ability for the dog to get their own bowl after eating. If someone is in a wheelchair, it is not easy to retrieve a bowl from wherever the dog moved it while eating, so we typically have the dogs get their bowls after eating. Darby didn't seem to like retrieving items or her bowl so this yesterday and this morning, I started having her retrieve her frisbee from UP dog. She was really good at it and super enthused to get, so I moved to a plastic colored bowl to see if she would retrieve that. She picked up on it super quickly! It's amazing to see how quickly she picks up on things and how smart she is!! As I'm writing this and linking the videos, she's sitting by me and watching my laptop with me saying her name on the video! She's such a cutie!
Today was the last day that I had to spend with Neeco before he went off to his new moms for the semester. He will only be here for half of a semester to finish of his high/low training and get him ready for placement. Then it's back to the training center for him to get his eyes checked because we want to make sure that his retinal folds won't cause him to go blind and to check his hips again to make sure that hip dysplasia won't affect his working ability. It was a hard day for me, we spent the day snuggling. I am so proud of the progress we have made this semester and I'm excited to see the progress he will continue to make in the coming months!
This weekend was a young adult weekend for my church, Jenny (who was housing him over J-term) was going to Florida for the weekend, so I offered to bring him with me. I was a little bit nervous about bringing him because of his singing when he wants something. I was shocked by how well he did!
Before we even went to the weekend, we had to pick up some of my friends from the Mall of America. While we were there, there was another service dog that was working. When I saw them coming towards us, I asked Neeco to "watch me" and we just walked past each other as a non-issue. A few moments later, the handler of the other dog came up to me and talked to me about how proud she was that my dog listened to me and this was one of the first times that she has seen a service dog not react to her dog and listen to their handler. She pointed to Neeco and told me that he was a real service dog. I didn't know what else to say but "thank you" to her because we have been working so hard on him not reacting to other dogs on leash. While at the weekend, he rocked it. He was really good at staying on his mat when I was in the seminars. He did really well with the little kids when they came on Saturday too. I was really proud of how well he did the entire weekend, especially with greeting of people when I allowed him to do so! He did really good with everyone around trying to distract him, despite me asking them not to. I don't really know what else to say except that he did really well and I could just see the progress that he had made and how ready he was for placement. I didn't bring any samples with me because I didn't know how to keep them cool when I wasn't using them. We played a bunch outside with his new toy that he absolutely loves that I got from Target on our way there. I couldn't be more proud of how well he did.
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