Kathie and I walked one route in the morning yesterday and had a visitor in the afternoon. My uncle took a video of us while he was here so that our friends could see her doing a tiny bit of work. Mostly they will see her hamming it up for the camera when he tries to take a close shot of her. Here is the video on YouTube.
Kathie has begun her “testing phase.” This is the phase in which she frequently disobeys my commands in order to find out what her limits are and what I will permit. It is a very difficult and painful phase emotionally in the development of our relationship. It means that I issue frequent corrections, often using the leash. My two previous dogs hardly ever required leash corrections; and I am learning that Kathie is so testy that I must either use the leash or find some other way of getting and keeping her attention long enough to convince her to do what I want and then convince her to accept my praise in a timely manner so that praise and the good behavior get associated together. Sometimes Kathy is like a little experiment on steroids: “I think I’ll try this. No, maybe she wants that. Oh how about that? Oh, hey, what’s that noise? Who’s that over there? Hey, why’s she telling me good girl? Let’s ssee if I can do it again… I’ll try sniffing here. Not that? Ok, how about laying down for a belly rub? My raiser used to do that… How about sitting over here? Nope? How about laying down in my crate? No? How about standing over here? No? How about sitting right by her? Oh she likes that? Whew! Now will she rub my belly? Darn! She’s correcting me. Here we go again! What was it she wanted me oto do … Oh, sit! You mean sit and REST!!!” Oh, you don’t understand! I wiggle and jiggle and wriggle! I have to do that! But you want me to just sit here!”
We are working on not popping up at every noise. That is going to take a while… She is very, very curious.
People often see me having these testy arguments with one of my dogs; and the first thing out of their mouth is, “Isn’t that dog trained?” It seems that people’s expectation of dogs once they arrive home is that they are perfect. I hate to burst people’s bubbles; but that is never the true, and there is no quicker way to burst a partnership than to interfere with a comment like that. If a dog appears to be having difficulty, there may be a variety of reasons. The dog may be communicating legitimate disobedience that the person is not reading correctly. If so, the person will eventually learn by paying a hard consequence, and they will have to apologize to the dog.
On the other hand, the dog may be overwhelmed or confused and need more direction from the person, and the dog may be acting out the confusion. On a third hand, some dogs act out when they don’t feel well, when they have recently been bullied by other animals, etc.
So never assume that a dog isn’t trained. When in doubt, always remember: you have bad days on your job, too.
Last night, we watched a video that Seeing Eye will send out at our request to two family or friends. I opted not to send the video. It is on YouTube and has remain and I suppose most of my peeps can watch it there. If you happen to be awaiting the arrival of a family member or griend, I hope you will watch this video. It will be enlightening.
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I hated the testing phase! Hugs!
BTW, did you post something describing Thursday’s events? If so, I seem to have missed it. Thanks!