Whew, time definitely needs to slow down a little. How can I keep people up to date on things if time keeps getting in the way?
So last week Luna and I had our first follow up visit from Leader Dogs. I was a little nervous about it since Luna was definitely out of sorts work wise last week. I’m pretty sure it was due to the heat. she really hates it and man I surely don’t blame her, bleh!
So late Thursday afternoon early evening John, sorry don’t remember his last name, but not John Bertram came to see us. I was taking Luna outside when he showed up and ended up getting lucky that he got to see Luna in one of her dog distraction moments. Luckily it wasn’t one of her *super* distracted ones* but enough to give him an idea of what I deal with every once in a while.
Before we started the lesson I wanted to work on he showed me how to do the *touch* technique. He was pretty sure that Luna already knew it and he was right. As soon as John told me what to do and I tried it Luna hit it right on first time! I’ve heard of the technique before, but it isn’t anything we learned.
Psst, Jessica John says Leader should add this into the training!
Now, it’s route time.
Tim Hortons/Wendy’s route
The problem I was having with this particular route was that I didn’t understand why Luna was crossing the way she was and swerving more than she usually does. I wasn’t sure if I was doing something wrong or if there was something that bothered her. Instead of continuing to work on it with the mobility instructor here that doesn’t let me know we’ve missed something until a few steps later like blended curbs or tell me that she’s way off where we need to be but not explain what she is seeing I figured getting someone from Leader would be much better and could give me the feedback I needed before and not after the fact and making things worse. Don’t get me wrong the mobility instructor here is totally awesome, but she isn’t quite grasping that the way Luna works is a lot different than my last dog and where Noah didn’t care that *whoops* I past that and she didn’t say so until 5 steps later, lets do it again. Luna is more like *oh no* what did I do wrong and *why* are we doing that again, didn’t I do it right the first time? And *why* is my human getting frustrated?
Ok, enough background, sorry for that. ☺️
Turns out that this route really is a weird crossing and will take some patterning her to *find the* areas instead of just find the curb. For example, I’ll have to work with her on *find the gap* instead of find the curb because at the curb is a manhole cover.
NEWS FLASH! Luna absolutely without a doubt seriously hates manhole covers. She will not step on them what so ever. This is feedback that I didn’t receive with regular mobility and couldn’t figure out. Every few steps on this route there are manhole covers. Sadly one of them is right in a straight line to the curb going to and coming from Tim Hortons/Wendy’s and Luna will go around them which causes us to go off track. But Luna being Luna once we’re past the horrible things all is right with the world and off we go.
Another crossing on this route from Tim Hortons/Wendy’s Luna will not make a straight crossing and John believes that it may be to her the cars are way too close for her liking and she tries really hard to keep me away from the traffic. He noticed she does this even when we’re walking down the sidewalk.
So, despite the fact my little pocket rocket didn’t go flying down the street like we usually do due to it being too warm for her the visit went great. I learned something new about Luna *manhole covers* are horrible! We now include *touch* in our daily routine.
I haven’t had a chance to see how the *touch* technique does when she’s seriously dog distracted, but I’m sure that time will come. Until then, see you at the next update!