Whew, I made it. I am all caught up on the blog entries. Sorry with the slow updates, but what an emotional week it has been.
This entry has some videos in it so I do hope you enjoy if you haven’t seen them already, 🙂
Today’s entry is pretty short and that’s because we only had one route today followed by some playtime for the awesome puppies!
Monte totally rocked it!
So today’s route was the football route. According to all those that can see, this route is shaped like a football. This is a great first solo route because there are no street crossings involved. This is the perfect time for you and your dog to just go and learn to read each other without having to worry about, which way do I go or how many crossings was that? Oh yeah, and what in the world was the name of that street again?
For this route you get off the bus and go left down the sidewalk, then make a right turn, cruise on down the sidewalk some more, this time going down hill, get to the corner and turn right again and make your way back to the bus. See, no worries, just pick up that harness and go go go! However, you still have to watch out for the squirrels, distracting children and maybe people doing yard work, 🙂
Monte and I did an awesome job. This was his super best day so far! He did not go for Stephanie once when we were getting ready to board the bus, when we got off the bus and most importantly, when we did the route! This awesome boy showed me what he is made of and how well he can actually work.
I absolutely love that he is very cautious. He slows down when the sidewalk changes either going up hill or down hill and when he feels I’m stable he’ll pick back up to our regular speed. Monte will also go around the smallest things, such as twigs.
We just had one small hickup and that was when we made our first right turn. He went to turn and saw Stephanie hanging waaaaaaay behind us and missed the sidewalk we were suppose to go down next. However, after we got assistance and sorted ourselves back out he actually forgot all about her and finished the route. We did not do a second run for this route. Stephanie and I decided it was best to end the day on a super positive note. It was the best working route Monte has done and we wanted it to end that way and not risk it.
Super congrats to my boy, he did it!
So, now for those cool Monte videos shall we?
This first one is Monte playing with his kong. This is definitely one of his favorite toys. I have to make sure to check him before we leave because he will sneak and pick it up and try and take it with us, lol.
This next video is Monte with his nyla bone. He loves this toy as well, but he does not try and sneak this one out of the room, 🙂
Finally, here is Monte playing in the playpin here at Leader Dogs for the Blind. My speed demon!
I hope you all enjoyed those. Sunday is a day of rest so there will not be a training 8 day entry. The next one will be training day 9 on Monday.
Everyone have a wonderful Labor Day!