Goldendoodle Service

Heel is considered one of the basic dog commands. In a heel, your dog keeps your pace, close to your leg and attention straight ahead. Ebony is not good at the classic heel. Ebony’s main job to date has been to protect my left side.  I call her my fuzzy left bumper as she protects me from running into the things that I can’t see on my left side.  She is very skilled with helping me navigate with the shopping cart but she does that by walking about 1-2 feet ahead of me. She helps pull the cart and nudges it with her nose as needed to avoid obstacles.  Unfortunately, that is not heeling and I am working with her to pull/nudge with the cart but otherwise stay at my side while walking. 

Through a lot of snafus we missed the dog training Sunday and I was angry, sick and frustrated. When I got back home, my assistant came over and decided to try something new.  She worked with Ebony, my service dog, off-leash and Ebony did great. Without the distraction of the leash, Ebony stayed on her pace, keeping her eye on Eileen.  I have been practicing heel off leash with my service dog to do little things like taking out the garbage, getting something out of the car etc and she has been spot on.  But if I say “heel” with the leash on, she wants to be about a foot ahead. I think this is going to be another slow lesson in relearning, just like we had to relearn “in”.  For a long time “in” meant sit by the open car door and wait for someone to boost her in. That worked when she was 12 pounds but when she hit 50 pounds it was vital that “in” meant hop into the car and settle into her spot in the backseat. Unfortunately, that took about two months before she was consistently hopping in the car as soon as she heard “in”.  Hopefully “heel” won’t take as long (crosses fingers)!

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Thank you for those of you who have expressed your concern. Ebony is doing great but I have had a series of health concerns that prevented me from blogging. I am grateful to my beautiful niece who continues to assist me in training, exercising and entertaining the talented Ebony. I will post as I can and I will publish my snippets of training notes and significant stepping stones that I think are of interest in the whole big picture of living with and training a service dog.

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Now that my Goldendoodle puppy has her service dog in training vest, I thought it was time to start taking her out.  Since I have to go to the doctor’s office regularly and I want the office to really support this partnership, I decided to take her.  She got pretty antsy when I was checking in at the counter.  She needed a couple of corrections to sit at my side.  Once we were sitting in the waiting room, she sat in front of me. She would turn her head if the kids squealed but she would immediately respond to Watch me.  I didn’t let anyone but the office receptionist pet her.

We were in the waiting room for almost 40 minutes but she only got up a couple of times and always sat right back down. When they called me, Ebony dug her heels in.  I had to drag her the first eight feet before she finally starting walking next to me.  She was confused with my climbing on the scale to get weighed and it took me awhile to get her to sit out of the medical assistant’s way.  She was good in the exam room until they pricked my finger for a blood test.  I don’t think that I flinched but she definitely reacted to it. She stood up and got really close to me but she did not try to interfere.

By the time the doctor came in, she was pretty tired. She just kind of splatted on the floor.  Very impressive! hehe Overall, the trip was a success.  Primarily, it gave me a good idea on what we need to work on. 

• Distractions
• Down-Stay
• Visit
• Positioning of sit

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After much saving of pennies and waiting in anticipation, my Goldendoodle’s first service vest arrived late yesterday! Although it is an extra small, it is still a little loose on her. I was worried that it wouldn’t fit for long but I think we have some growing room on this one! I purchased the vest from Sit and Stay.  They seemed to have the cheapest ones there with zippered pockets. 

I also purchased three patches: “Ask to Pet Me, I am Friendly”, “Service Dog”, “In Training”.  Although the patches are designed to fit together, the vest was too small.  I had to put the pet me patch on the back and then the other patches on each side.  They recommend gluing the patches and of course sell the glue.  The patches were not cheap though and I wanted to be able to remove them from this vest and put them on her next one. I used to be a seamstress so I figured no problem.  Well an hour and half later I was strongly reconsidering!  The vest is well made with thick water resistant fabric and hand sewing the patches with MS fingers was a REAL challenge.

She has only worn the vest for a couple of minutes at a time so far but she seems to like it just fine.

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In order to gain more information and to build my support network, I have started looking at some of the different Internet groups available for Service Dog trainers and owners. I have started my search at Yahoo groups as I am already a member of several satisfying Yahoo groups.  I must admit that most of those groups are on niche subjects and were initiated my friends.  Some of my Internet group experiences with larger public groups have been less satisfying with flaming and other unpleasantries.

The one that most piqued my interest was OwnerTrainedServiceDogsforBeginners@yahoogroups.com I am still waiting on my approval for that group.  I did apply and was accepted into Service-Dogs@yahoogroups.com, assistance-dogs@yahoogroups.com and G-Dogs@yahoogroups.com.  Although I can not discuss specific posts or authors here to ensure their confidentiality, I will try to post a review of these groups based on my personal experience. Wish me luck!

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