I have had a rough couple of days and have been resting during much of my off time. Please forgive the lack of blog entries. I wrote on Facebook that if I had planned to train my dog in a sawna, I would have gone to find one. The heat and humidity has been very bad. For students coming from Texas, where the temperatures are over 100 right now, the weather here is relieving. For those who are coming from the midwest, like myself, where the weather has been a bit more temperate so far, we are having to buck up and endure. However, heat and humidity are migraine and asthma triggers for me. I have had to build rest time into the middle of the day; and Kathie is learning how to work with me when I am not in the best frame of mind. Sometimes the results of my tired brain are funny. The other day at lunch, I asked for a “Kathie with cream” instead of a coffee with cream”.
We are finished with all of our route-walking. The purpose of the routes is to give us opportunities to practice working the dogs in different types of traffic situations. Kathie and I did well together on these trips. By the end, she was beginning to ignore distractions such as children and dogs. She seems to like baby strollers, though; so we will be working on those for a while. We often have distractions presented by instructors so that we can work the dogs through and teach them to ignore and keep walking on past.
In this particular training, unlike some of my trainings with my past dogs, I have had a large number of instances of simultaneous distractions–times when I have a couple of little dogs that a person is walking and a baby carriage at the same time. These are unplanned, and they are especially good for us though a little stressful for both of us.
The normal procedure for handling distractions depends on whether you know the distraction is coming. Assuming I know it is coming (e.g. I head a child up ahead), I say, “Leave it” one time. If Kathis then shows interest in the child, I say, “Pfui!” and correct her with the leash. Depending on the degree of her reaction, the correction can be severe. If she is just nosing a child, I want her to know that hey, I do not want this behavior. I don’t want to also scare the child while I’m correcting her. If she is running after a squirrel at top speed, I want to get her attention before she drags me with her, and I want her to learn that she can never do that again, and I am very very serious. That correction will be very hard. It doesn’t hurt the dog, but it does get their attention. If it looks like it hurts and it breaks your heart to watch, consider the power that a running dog can have over a person who cannot see. I have been pulled down the stairs by a dog who was distracted–fortunately still while in training. The dog and person power are supposed to work together–the dog is not supposed to work against the person.I
In this phase of training, we are doing what are called freelance trips. On these trips, we go to various locations that give us opportunities to work in environments similar to what we might encounter at home. A student might go over to a college campus to see hwo a dodg works on winding sidewalks. A person who lives in a rural environment might take several trips to an area with no sidewalks to develop “country work” skills. All of us do this at least once, but if we live in an ares where we need this skill extensively we take more trips.
The other day I took a trip with another student to a department to a store where we worked the dogs on an escalator. We put booties on the dogs’ feet to protedt their toes from getting caught in the escalator as they got off. My dog lost a bootie as we were entering the store; and I had to stop to put it back on. As I was bent over putting the bootie on, a child ran straight toward her, screaming, “DOOOOOOOOG!!!” She started to run toward the child. I kept putting on the bootie and saying, “Leave it. Pfui! Leave it. Pfui!” I couldn’t give her a leash correction without dropping the bootie, and I had visions of her runnning three-legged through the store, dragging me and the bootie behind her. My instructor started to laugh, and it became funnier and funnier.
All was well, and the escalator trip was beautiful. After my trip was done, my instructor dropped me off at the purse section, where I instructed Kathie in the fine art of browsing while she took my classmate on his escalator trip. No, I did not buy any purses. But it was fun to look.
I don’t know what we are doing today.
I’ve lost track of what we have eaten when. Of course, yesterday we had the traditional hot dogs, baked beans, etc. About half the people had sauer kraut and half did not. Dessert was capuccino mousse.
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