0 Comments
If you look closely at these two pictures of Benji, you may notice that he has something around his muzzle. If you're wondering, no, he is not wearing a muzzle. It's called a Gentle-Leader, Halti, or Nose Necklace. It has many different names, but it is never used as a muzzle to prevent a dog from barking, biting, or anything along those lines. The simplest explanation is that sometimes some dogs respond better them than they do a harness. It helps you to communicate better with your dog, so they stop pulling and the communication from the leash is clearer using a Nose Necklace.
Most dogs have this reflex called the opposition reflex, which encourages the dogs to pull in the opposite direction of pressure, even if it is choking them (ie pulling on their collar, even if they can't breathe. Using the nose necklace, or even a harness replaces this reflex with pressure in different areas so that the dog doesn't pull as much. This idea is very similar to the same reason/idea as a horse on a halter: where the nose goes, the body follows! The reason why we use it in our training is because the ideal service dog doesn't pull at their leash, instead they walk in a heel (left side) or side (right side) of the handler, and the leash forms a letter J. This is also known as loose leash walking. In the ideal world, the dog would eventually be able to do this on a harness, but this isn't always practical with the dog. So no, my service dog is not wearing a muzzle. So I have had some questions about the ages of the dogs, so here are their birthdays and their corresponding ages based on today!
Neeco 1/1/17 (9 months)- Black Labrador retriever Ganther 4/2/17 (5 months)- golden retriever Finley 2/15/16 (1 year and 7 months)- Labrador retriever Benji 10/19/14 (2 years and 11 months)- golden doodle (poodle + golden mix) Grady 5/19/17 (4 months)- golden retriever And Tory and Coco are both 5 years old and golden Labs (golden retriever + Labrador retriever0 Today, we had class to learn some new cues to work on a practice over the week!
So last week, we learned "fix," where the dog makes a conscious effort to move their paw up and over the leash when it is stuck around one of the their front paws. This is helpful for when their handler is in a wheelchair and the dog is all tangled up in their leash. Benji's getting really good at it now, he still needs a little bit of help and work on it, but he's getting it. This week, we learned "go through," with this cue, the dog walks in front of the handler through a door or narrow space, turns around and backs up and the returns to a heel or side after the person is through the door. This was a combination of many cues. First, we had to work on "back" with the dogs, so we made chairs into narrow aisles and practiced with the dogs backing up with us in front of them and then backing up with them at a heel or side. After they got this, we started working on going through the door. So we'd lure them through the door and then say "back" and then lure them back into a heel to teach "go through." Benji was really good at it and caught on really quickly. But with all cues, we have to keep working on them to make sure they're prefect and the dog doesn't just do them for treats. We also learned "say hello," which will be really helpful for us with the dogs, when we want them to meet someone, but they're wearing their vest. With this cue, the dog is able to go approach the person, get pet for a little bit, and then the dog returns back to the handler. We've worked on this cue with Benji because he needs to work on his confidence and my partner, Ashley, and I think it would be helpful for him to get used to people around him and just meeting people may help him to gain the confidence he needs in big crowds. So that's what we'll be working on for the next week with Benji before our meeting next Wednesday! I had to leave early, but my partner told me that after I left they played games working on him going to different handlers and also choosing to "leave it" when they were not on a leash. He apparently did really well with all of this!
|
Archives
June 2020
|