6:50- wake up and rub eyes and go OH CRAP!.... There is a sub night person that comes in on Thursday nights and she may have knocked on my door and I definitely didn't hear it. My phone, which I've been using as an alarm clock- placing it under my pillow had apparently fallen off the bed so nothing woke me up and I didn't hear the call over the intercom either. I flew out of bed and was thanking God that I'd laid my clothes out last night. I threw them on as fast as I could and was scooping out AJ's food when Barb knocked on the door asking if I was ok. I apologized and explained what happened and I was hustling to get out the door. She told me no problem and I quickly put my shoes and coat on as AJ finished up her food and water. We rushed out the door and AJ quickly peed and pooped for me, which I was glad. Barb had hung back and came over and asked if I knew where the disposal pail was since we are now picking up on our own after our dogs, of which I did not since this was new from the last class too. She also stopped me and said that she heard we had been doing well and that she had heard that I was a little disappointed that I didn't have her for this class. Which to be honest, at first I was but Cristina has been an amazing trainer and I truly respect her for her kindness, patience, good instruction and the raport that she truly knows dogs. We quickly worked our way back inside where I ditched the outer layers and we sped off to the dining room.
7:20- breakfast was a fruit cup, eggs and a sausage patty. I ate quickly and since I still needed to do a couple of things to finish getting ready and to take with me to Huntington for the day, I took off back to the room to finish up and gather my stuff to go.
8:00- We worked the dogs through the orange barrel obstacle course to the vans to head to Huntington. AJ has been balking with getting into the full size older van we are using. So this morning she flat out refused to get in. I tried coaxing her up into the van with kibble- rewarding her for putting her head in, then stepping up onto the We left and it is about a 25 minute drive to Huntington. We get to the shopping area and the parking lot is just jam packed for some reason. So we circled around among some rude NY drivers and finally was able to get to the curb for drop off.
My student partner went inside and then I went, working in one door and through the Panera Bread to the other side of the store and into their party room that they had reserved for our group. It was a little tight with all the dogs but we were separate from the rest of the restaurant and able to communicate easily with each other. An amazing volunteer came and stayed in the room with us to help any of us to the restrooms or to get us our allotment of one drink off the menu and to take our orders for lunch also off the menu.
Cristina brought the longer harness today too and we swapped that out. Poor girl, the harness is so long that if it weren't for the ears that the handle goes through, the handle would literally go down over her butt and down to her ankles. It is a 21" harness since she is so short and I'm so tall. I can't remember for sure but I know I had between a 21-23" handle with Rei for the same reason.
Photo: AJ standing at Panera bread on the tile floor. You can see the harness on her back and then handle going across her butt at the base of her tail.
When it was my turn, we worked out of the party room and out onto the kept . It was a nice wide sidewalk with some unevenness in spots. We worked about a half a block and all of a sudden AJ stopped and had to go poop. It was so fast that it was like well shoot I didn't even have a chance to pull over. We cleaned it up and took care of it, as it's very normal for new teams to have accidents during training just once or twice because they are still learning to communicate to each other. It's only if it becomes a re-occurring thing that it is a problem. So we take off and we work for two blocks. It was pretty loud and started out pretty simple with the wide sidewalks. We go across the street at the 2nd block and then make an immediate right to cross the street again.
We soon realized that Cristina would say "Okay, Forward" and AJ would surge forward to cross the street, regardless of the traffic and I stopping her and making her wait for my cue to go Forward. After the 2nd or 3rd time is when we picked up on what was happening and Cristina had me remind her to stay when I stopped and at one crossing she was so eager to go that she took off 3 times and so I gave her a leash correction. We don't want to squash the drive to work but she does need to listen to my cue as to when I'm ready to go. Cristina then changed her wording to "You are good to cross the street" and with the reminders to stay and the changing of wording, AJ very quickly started improving on her impatience to cross the street.
So after crossing the 2nd time, we then went down a very narrow sidewalk with parking meters on the right and store fronts with awnings on the left. We went under an awning that had a string that was hanging down with a washer attached to it and the first time we went past it did hit me on the side of the head, but it was a very thin string so we didn't correct on it. We then went to the automatically opening door to the left into a pharmacy that merged into a grocery store. We worked through some store aisles that had stands in the center of the aisle that AJ had to stop because it was too narrow. She did beautifully on those. Once we got out of the other side of the store, we make a left and at the street crossing we make a left, where it has a pole that is set back from the curb, making it a difficult left turn as she has to turn herself sharply and immediately work both of us around the pole and then take off. We continue on along to the next block and Cross over back to the original street we were on and walk the two blocks back to Panera. With AJ being on street side of the sidewalk, there is an area that there either some bread or something on the ground that a lot of sparrows were fluttering and hopping about the ground that peaked her interest but with a quick No- Hop up she was focused back on her job. We make it back to the Panera and my student partner went out with Cristina. The whole route she was pulling really hard and my shoulder was sore. She was like a freight train in the longer open stretches. So getting back to Panera was a welcomed rest on the shoulder.
The volunteer had taken my order for lunch before I left and about 11:30 they had everyone's lunch together. I had the Turkey, Apple, Cheese sandwich and a bag of chips with lemonade.
After lunch, we went out a second time and AJ was much more settled in regards to pulling. Her pace was a lot better but she was really sniffy and distracted in several spots for some reason, wanting to sniff at things and slowing down. A few verbal corrections of No and later a leash correction when she was starting to veer got her re-focused pretty quickly. After the stronger leash correction she was like Ok, sorry! and behaved most of the route back to Panera. When we first started, there was a kid skipping and running around his mother coming towards us and AJ got excited and started to veer towards him. A quick NO- Forward got her back on track. Later she was really interested in the bird spot again and didnt want to quit sniffing so the sharp correction got her to refocus and I was then able to follow up with lots of praise for her. Once back at Panera, Cristina said she was glad to see her show her more natural self as it let me see what her distracted side is like and that I was able to handle and work through them really well.
We then worked back through the other part of Panera and loaded up in the vans to go back to GDF since we'd spent the whole day in Huntington. So today is dog distractions with one of Barb's well behaved pet dogs. We unloaded from the vans one at a time and worked through the obstacle course that had been moved and a little more difficult with the space tighter. We worked around the square and past the little dog that was pretty quiet but was fairly close. She got a time out at the first half of the block with the other dog and praised the rest of the way to the curb. When we made the right turn, the dot was along side the sidewalk and with a time out followed by a quick leash correction, AJ made it clear she wasn't gonna be following this guy again.
3:00 Today is picture day, so once we got back, students got themselves ready for pictures at 4.
4:00- Picture time! Everyone gathered in the Lobby and waited their turn for their individual phto with their dogs, the ID photo, and then when that was done we all lined up for a class photo. After we were done with the class photos, another student- Nancy R has her pup Georgie. We were told that Georgie and AJ are litter mates by my trainer who used to work in the kennels in the puppy department. So we wanted to pictures of the four of us all together.
Photo: Kacie & Nancy sitting on a leather love seat side by side. In front of them are two black labs- AJ on the left and Georgie on the right, looking at the camera.
4:45- feed, water, break the dogs for the evening.
5:30- Dinner is Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a dessert of tiramisu cake
6:15- water the pups
6:30- Carol, a volunteer comes and shows us some of the merchandise GDF has available online. After the volunteer has left, Cameron comes around asking if anyone wants to go to the groom room and do some free running of the dogs since it's still too cold out to do so. We take AJ down and pretty shortly she starts t act like she needs to go poo. We take her outside to the break area and she goes pee but no poo. I opt to not take her back to free run so we don't have an accident. Cameron tells me that I can take her back down after the 8:30 break if she does go poo though.
8:30- final break and she goes! Yay! So we go back down to the groom room and she runs around for a bit. Here is a picture of her next to the benches that line the walls and she is standing and looking past the camera.
We come back upstairs and I start to work on updaing the blog for this day but am dosing off quickly so I call it a night early and am out cold by 10:45.
Night all!
