July 14th weekend

We have had a very active weekend. On Friday we went to a new playground, Saturday we had CGC class and a regular trip to Walmart then today we went to the Summer Art Fair.


Friday we went to a new playground. While the girls played with grammy, grampy and daddy I worked with Luke on doing down stays while Ara is playing and out of site. Also while other kids are running around. He love kids and would love to run and play with them, so this is a big thing for him to work on. He also has a hard time when Ara is out of his site yet still in ear shot. All in all he did a wonderful job, we did down stays while I was standing and then at a bench.We will work at the playground again this week :)

On Saturday Luke had CGC class and will take his test next week. We did some extra work on polite greetings while walking from class to the pet store (we needed some supplies). After class we went to Walmart for a regular trip (normally we only do short trips but he has been doing so well). He did great and ignored distractions, we worked on stopping at intersections and while checking out we did some meet and greet with emplyees and a few adults. We want to make sure that people = good, especially since we had a bit of a set back this week due to a rowdy bunch of guys near our apartment. We also did some treadmill training and he is up to doing 5minutes on it. Since we can not get out to exercise when the weather is bad this is very important training and he enjoys it.

On Sunday we went to the Summer Art Fair. We did get stopped at the gate and told "no dogs allowed" but when we told them Luke was a Service Dog in Training they said, "great enjoy the fair".  I have to say that we have not (so far) had any time of negative access issue. We got to work on position of where Luke is to Ara and some new commands.
I let Luke do a greet with a young man at the water station and as soon as he was done being petted he returned to heel position on his own, he did this several times during the day. It is always great to see when something clicks. We saw tons of peoples in hats, with umbrellas and even a giant chicken statue, non of these phased Luke at all. Ara was a little off today and you could tell because Luke was paying extra close attention to her while she played on the playground. Her tremors were bad and she stumbled alot. At one point she disappeared from his view (I knew where she was though) and I told him "Luke find Ara where is she" he quickly began to search for her and found her visually then went to her and gave her a nudge. Now what is really neat is that he actually went up the play equipment stairs (medal with smooth vent holes) to nudge her and acknowledge the "find" This is a very new command we are working on and the first time we were able to do it outside the house. **As a side note there were no other children on the playground it was just us**  
We also got to work on "under" at the picnic area while the girls enjoyed some strawberry ice cream and while the girls made play dough at the girl scout table.
To and from the event we had to walk on the neighborhood side walks and cross walks, so we got to work on stopping and waiting at intersections and dealing with some light traffic.
It was such a great day with many compliments, questions and new training. Here are some pictures

So what are we working on this coming week?  We will be working on politely sitting while I or Ara is greeted by someone and staying in heel position when approach by another dog/human team. These are the two hardest things for him on the CGC, he can be a little over excited sometimes in these two situations.