Day 68

Today was the big day. Sanity went out on her first field trip as an assistance dog in training. We went to the bank. Not just to sit in line at the drive up window, but to park, walk across the parking lot, down the sidewalk, into the bank and into the line waiting for a teller window to be available. WOW! Is all I can say at this point. She was so serious about what she was doing. Managed a half way decent heel, some great sits and even understood what I wanted her to do at the counter. Her down was done on a verbal only for the very first time. She watched all the people and kept her nose to herself. Good job, kid, good job indeed.

On the homefront, we have progressed to a serious six inch reach that includes distractions and the requirement of having to turn the head left or right or tilt it up or down in order to reach the dumbbell. Five repetitions with only one correction is a really good average and I sure am pleased with her.

Fun stuff with the place command is working on her placing and holding a sit on the little step stool. She is almost steady enough for me to get some pictures of her doing it. What was really funny today was watching her try out different ways of actually getting up onto the stool without knocking it over. At one point, she decided it would be better to back up onto it. That lasted for several tries and then she went back to watching where she was going. She seems pretty proud of the fact that she can place on the stool two different ways. Her idea, not mine.

The very last thing we did last evening was to start the hold. For no reason I can think of I find myself using one of the plastic dumbbells for the reach and a wooden dumbbell for the hold. Sort of a sneaky way of introducing different materials early, I guess.





Posing to show off our new vest. The white patch reads "in training".



Holding a sit/stay and waiting to be told to get in the car.





















The place command morphs into the "get in the car" command.



















And in she goes. Wish the camera had been fast enough to see the jump. It was really pretty.

Yes, that really is my car and yes my license plate really is FETCHIT.