Week of Sept. 8th - lots of New experiences

We worked on many new things this week.

Through out the week we worked on sound distractions/desensitization knocking, door bell, dog barking and squeak toy sounds. We also worked on Leave it by putting Luke's favorite treats on the floor and doing obedience around them with out him sniffing or trying to eat any, he did great. Of course we also worked on Nose touch and paw push plus basic obedience.

Now on to the new experiences

We went out to dinner at Red Lobster. As you know we have been working toward this by going to McDonalds and casual small places. It is funny you plan for things to go a certain way and it never does. Normally dinner is around 1 1/2 hours  or so, well not this one. Due to the kitchen being behind and mixing up our orders we were there for almost 3 hours. Luke did so good, he did softly bark twice when there was a loud bang on the wall behind us (learned that is were the big dishwasher is) and then once when our waitress approached. I gave the "leave it" and had him focus on me and he did not do it again, he settled down and went to sleep. He did give Ara "kisses" when she was getting a bit antsy and then resettled again.

He did not like the flash of the camera lol

Next adventure was the Halloween store. I loaded my treat bag with lots of high value treats for this. I am planing on doing at least a weekly training trip to this store while it is here. For this first visit we walked around the store, stopped and looked at what ever the girls wanted to see and did a few of the smaller automated props/decorations. The only thing that caused Luke to softly woof was a big witch that went off, but it was not the motion it was the noise of the motor. We got a lot of cute ideas for the girl's halloween costumes :)

Again with the theme of the unexpected always happening. Little sister tripped fell and we had to make a trip to the ER. (thankfully it was not too bad and she is all better now). Luke did pretty well, and our hospital was so great. He did have some soft vocalizations (one was when the doctor knocked on the door and then the mechanical sound of a big copy machine) but other than that he did a great down stay, guiding Ara while walking and even did an automatic stop at a pedestrian walk way (wooohoo).  The staff were all really great with Luke being there and understood that he was in training. Little sister thought the ER was a great place she got to lay on the big bed, stand on the scale, and was such a trooper. I was able to snap a few pictures.  (Why do I take pictures? I use pictures for my training logs and as proof of training)

So I have touched on this in a few other post but want to bring it up again. Luke is almost 11mo old and still very much a puppy. When the vest goes on he goes into working mode. When Ara needs him at home he is there for her. But he also gets a lot of free time to be a puppy and act like a goof ball. He enjoys doing Rally O, running in the yard, playing fetch, doing puppy puzzle toys and being Ara's best buddy. It is so important to have a good balance between work and play, dogs are not robots.

Love this pic of him running, ears flapping in the wind....lol