Day 10- Wed. Nov. 6th

We started off the morning with Boomer nudging me in the face when Donna knocked on the door to come in and wake me up, however I wasn't coherent enough to realize what he'd done to reward him for it though, so he's getting it. :) Then we went out to give him a chance to break and again he's being much slower about his business. Kind of wondering if something is up but still watching to see what he does.
We went to breakfast and Kevin had a bowl of fruit, and a wonderful toasted egg, cheese, and bacon sandwich on bread like French bread. YUMMY! :) We then went back to the room and got our stuff together before heading out to the gathering room to go on our morning walk. We all loaded up on the bus and were off to Kings Park again to work the opposite direction we'd worked the afternoon before. Kings Park isn't too far away so we were there pretty quickly and the weather while a little cool was warmer than the day before. Barb was driving the student with the poodle in a separate van as her allergies were just going haywire on the bus, (hence getting the poodle), so they parked the bus and the van parallel to each other a couple of spots apart but the doors facing each other. Then they put the chairs out for the students to sit in between the two vans.

I decided I should work on my listening exercises, as I'd found a new IPad compatible app from Advanced Bionics, called Clix, to do this. So while all but one of the other teams went outside to sit, I stayed on the bus since the conversations can get quite loud, this way I could work on these exercises. As usual, Boomer was ready go work and was just up and down repeatedly, but I was being persistent in making him lay back down. After about an hour, I was looking at the IPad and changing through some of the programs this app and moved, in which I unintentionally dropped the leash. Boomer heard that leash hit the floor immediately stood up and looked at me like "Time to go!!!??? OK!!!!" and as I reached forward to grab the leash, he spun and flew forward to the front of the bus and down the steps giving me an absolute heart attack. He had gone out to say hellooooooo to everyone else! LOL! I don't think I've ever gotten cords off that fast and got myself untangled from the cords I had around my neck and was grabbing for the whistle that I also have on a cord around my neck and flew off the bus in hot pursuit. As I came off the bus, another handler was like he's over here, I got him. LOL!

BOOGER!!!!!

After I got him, I went back on the bus to get my bag and came back out and sat in a chair with the circle of teams all together. Barb came and got me and we took off through what appeared to be downtown Kings Park by the library. We worked along to the first street, crossed and then made a right working along to the next corner, which was the funky one. We worked straight to the curb and then made a left, going around the pole, and then up the hill to the next street, to pass the other golden team. We then crossed the street and worked our way on towards the next curb without hesitation. At this curb we did a Left and started back towards the main street. We'd been going along at a good clip and all of a sudden Boomer jumped forward, startled by something, not sure what and then a dog began to bark. Wasn't really sure what happened but he re-composed himself very well and went right back to work. We worked our way towards the next curb and Barb stopped me as we had a really weird curb coming up. I was going to have to do almost a weave to the left around a big pole and then a sharp right back to the curb to be at the actual curb. So she told to just follow him and let him work it, so I did and he did great. We made a left and took off down the main street headed back in the direction of the bus. We worked our way past the open door, around the light pole and outside easel signs for the stores up to the next curb, a pretty major intersection.

We came up to the intersection and a police car was across the up curb across the street and another police car was parallel to me and partially out in the street and blocking the intersection entirely. We stood for a couple of minutes trying to figure out what was actually going on, thinking it was a funeral procession coming, but wasn't seeing anything yet. The officer happened to look over and see us and asked if we were just crossing and Barb answered yes, and he replied, go ahead and cross, so we did so and then worked our way on down to the driveway entry to the park and did the country walk, cutting in close to the curb along the front of the parking spots and then around the back of the bus and back to the bus. We then loaded up and headed back to GDF for lunch.

After lunch, which was soup and sandwich, we went into town to downtown Smithtown and sat at the town
hall parking lot. Since we were between the two vans, while the wind was blowing, for the most part it was blocked, so it was so sitting outside. We waited our turn as Chris; one of the media/PR people came to video several of the teams doing this walk. I was the first one out and Barb had collected up all of her student's handles except mine and had me duck into the bicycle shop that we were passing. As we walked in, a couple of guys came out and Barb, with the two guys, began putting the grip material that you find on handlebars onto the harness handles, scooting them onto the hand portion of the handle. It was an odd feeling at first, but I liked it as I got used to it.

We worked our way in and as they worked on these, I worked on the sit/sty I'd put him into. He pretty much sat there and watched everyone wrestling with the harness handles until time to go we did an about and worked our way back to the door and then made a right and continued on down the street to the top of the “p” where we made very sharp and nearly backward turn to get us heading towards the rounded part of the “p”. We continue on and work along until we cut back inward to the main street of Smithtown and soon back past the bike shop. Barb did stop me once as we travelled here as I was instinctively pulling my arm in to keep him from brushing me on the right side, so had to think through that and not make it easy for him, as when my vision deteriorates more, I won’t be able to catch these mistakes and it can mean really smacking into something hard.

We met up with another team just beyond the bicycle shop and the other trainer, Steve, worked with me back to the bus. We then went back to the GDF campus and had dinner together, of which I unfortunately cannot recall what it was.

After dinner, we had our grooming lecture, which Trainer Dan went over ear care of the dogs. We talked about how with the dogs ears, that the old saying, “If it isn’t broke, don’t try to fix it!” holds true in this case too. If the dog’s ears are doing well, leave them alone. ;) However for if the dog does have an ear infection and we need to clean the ears while it’s being treated, we were shown now to use ear cleaner, some 100% cotton, and how to use these to clean the dog’s ears. We also practiced cleaning out the ears and what are some of the tell tale signs of having an ear infection. After this lecture, it was break time and everyone pretty much headed to bed.

Night all!

Kacie & Boomer