My adventures continue with Frolic!
Wednesday afternoon, after our successful solos on the Elm Street route, we began freelance work. Basically, this is when we go off the planned routes and instead work in other situations we might encounter with our dogs in our daily lives. This training is tailored to our daily lives and is a little different for everyone, but there are some standard things we do and that I’ve done in every class.
It was good timing for a change, because our dogs were getting a bit bored with all the planned standard routes that are basically loops. These dogs are destination oriented, so loops, however many challenges we put in front of them, are going to get boring.
Also, while we had a few days where the weather was reasonable for January, the temperature is supposed to drop dramatically, and so yes we were all chanting “Indoor work! Indoor work! Indoor work!”
Wednesday afternoon, my group went to a Wegmans grocery store. We sat in the cafe area and practiced settling our dogs in public while we worked our dogs through the store one at a time.We practiced using a cart a little bit, but we only did it for a couple aisles, because I usually don’t use a grocery cart to shop because I’m often walking and so use a basket to make sure I’m not buying more than I can carry. So we switched from a cart to a basket (actually my instructor’s reusable grocery bag because we couldn’t find the baskets for some reason). We practiced going up and down the aisles and settling Frolic safely between me and the shelves so she’s out of the way of grocery carts and everything while I was looking at items on the shelves. It was a relatively chill trip while I still learned, or relearned, a bunch of tricks. It was also fun to be back with our small group. They switched up our lunch tables last Saturday, which felt like eons ago, so this trip all together felt like we were getting the old gang back together.
On Wednsday night, we had a lecture about dog food, treats, and toys, along with things that are very very bad for our dogs: chocolate, alcohol, garlic and onions, grapes and raisins, macadamia nuts, rqwhide, animal bones, antlers, chews from butchered animals, and toys that are too small or that they can destroy are all big no-nos.
On Thursday morning, we traveled by bus to a neighboring town, then walked to the train station, and took the train back to Morristown. Something about commuter trains, with the really steep steps to get on and off and me being irrationally worried that I’m going to get somehow stuck on the train made me a bit stressed about this one, but Frolic was a champion.
On Thursday afternoon, we did country work, which is work in neighborhoods without sidewalks. We walk on the left, facing oncoming trafic. We check frequently to make sure our dog is hugging the curb or grass line. We didn’t do a long trip for this work, because I really don’t have a lot of areas without sidewalks in D.C. But it was really good to get a refresher, and I learned a few new good tricks. Actually, Frolic was so good at this I almost felt bad that we don’t have much of this kind of work. But I didn’t feel too bad about that after what we did on Friday, which I’ll talk about tomorrow.
On Thursday night, we had another lecture on odds and ends. Basically, how to stsart giving our dogs some time off leash in our rooms, how to start allowing free access to water, and how to leave our dogs in their crates for small amounts of time. So far, we have kept our dogs on leash, attached to us basically all the time unless we’re sleeping or showering. This has helped with bonding and and also helped us make sure they weren’t getting into anything because they are still puppies. We’ve also been restricting their water as we basically re-potty train them, because they’ve been living in kennels during training for the last several months. And we need to enforce in general that we are their people and we are in charge now in all things, so they have to have good recall and also go to their crates on command in order to have small amounts of freedom. W also start practicing leaving them alone in the room because there are places we might want to go where it would not be appropriate to bring our dogs. Like I’mnot going to bring Frolic tandem biking, so she will need to be comfy hanging out without me. We started small, just five minutes at a time on everything. But as with all things, Frolic is awesome!
In the odds and ends lecture, we also talked about the importance of always having our dog on leash outside. Fenced in areas aren’t always secure, and dog parks can be dangerous because you don’t know anything about the other dogs who might be there, and since our dogs are working dogs they really don’t need that outlet. The instructors read us a letter they read every class, from a man who took his dog outside off leash, she saw a deer and took off after it and was hit by a car. It’s a letter that makes me cry every time and has successfully instilled a strong need to have my dog constantly on leash while outside, but unfortunately our instructors told us this is a situation that still happens.
I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about the great adventure of Friday! New York City! Spoiler alert, we crushed it! It was awesome!
Goodnight friends! 5:30 comes early.