Doggie's in the mall

It seems that everything came together today since it was the day that we were supposed to go to the mall and it was pouring rain. What better day to do a mall day? Leah is still sick so Courtney was going to have to do this with us all herself. The main goals at the mall were to do up and down escalators, elevators and stairs with open backs.

Once we all got out of the van and got our dogs harnessed (easier for some than others), we headed into the mall. Courtney took half of us up to Tim Horton’s to wait while she worked wit the other half. Katy hung out with her mom and Katjyia, Laura and Michelle went off shopping on their own. They all have quite a bit more sight than the rest of us.

When it was our turn, John and I followed Courtney to the first escalator down. Courtney was telling me that in training Bogart was bomb proof on escalators, elevators and stairs so that was good to hear. He hasn’t pulled any of his stair refusals while in harness in public. He still does this from time to time on the stairs in the school but not too often any more. John was having some issue with Rocco and he asked Courtney if he could just walk around the mall on his own. He lives in this area and knows the mall well and also has enough sight to get round even without a dog in this sort of lighting.

Courtney helped me find the HMV and, to my surprise, they had the CD I was looking for but couldn’t find in Vancouver. Not only that but it was on sale for $10.00. for those who might be interested the CD is Middle cyclone by Nico Case. When ever I go on a holiday or to some place interesting I like to buy a CD as a way of adding a musical memory to the place. Last year when I was in Cologne Germany I bought a CD by a popular alternative band. I have it on my phone so songs from it will come up from time to time.

After HMV Courtney just had me go down the stairs, walk around, back up the stairs and then down the escalator to the bottom floor. From there we took the elevator up to the third level and started pulling the group together. We all headed down to the main entrance . Here we had to wait for Courtney to go back up to Tim Horton’s to bring Michele and Laura down to see them manage the elevator. There was some mumbling about us having to wait for those two since they had been shopping around while we were doing what we needed to do. If they had time to shop one would think they could of had their Timmy’s at a time when it didn’t have the rest of the class waiting for them. As we enter the last week, I think everyone’s patience is getting a little shorter. We are all eager to get home and se how things will work out with our new partners.

In the afternoon we worked on food distractions and dog distractions. Treats were place on the floor in the main hallway and we had to walk our dogs through them without them trying to pick anything up. If I can be totally honest, I went up to my room after our late lunch, laid down on my bed and fell asleep. Jade came and got me so I missed the food distractions test. I'm sure bogart would have done great at being distracted by the food. that is the purpose of the test isn't it? :)

The dog distractions were interesting. Courtney brought out a golden lab named sable who had been disqualified from the special services program because she was just too hyper. First Courtney walked by with sable on leash and had her come right up to our dogs. I had to sit Bogart down several times but he listened fairly well. Then Courtney had Sable off leash and got her to wander around our dogs. You have to imagine this crazy panting hyper lab being encouraged to come and play with our dogs. Bogart didn’t handle this so well and needed a pretty hard correction. He is one who likes to play for sure.

Lastly, we went out to the courtyard to work on obedience . First we had the dog sit. Then we had them sit and lie down. Lastly we had them sit, lie down and we walked the length of a long leash from them before asking them to come. When they came to us and we had them sit, they would get a treat. We did this several times. Courtney said we should do this for a couple of minutes every day. It will help us gain the respect of the dog. This is also good to use to refocus the dog if yew feel they are not paying good enough attention.

Saturday night I mostly hung out in the room. I did get a chance to run Bogart in the courtyard for some exercise.

Sunday is our day off. For excitement I am going back to the Moonshine for their rock/blues jam around 2:30pm. It sounds like Leah and Courtney are going to come to watch for sure. We’ll see if anyone else wants to pop over.


Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention something that happened that was quite interesting. We were told that we had to pick a classmate to do the speech for us at graduation. Saturday morning at breakfast Kenneth proposed that, since there are two distinct age groups, that it would make sense to have two speakers. He suggested Katjyia and myself to be those two speakers. Everyone at the table agreed but what we didn’t know was that everyone wasn’t at the table. So I was called to a meting Saturday night so, as a group, we could discuss this issue and come up with a plan. It took much longer than I thought to agree on how to proceed. Apparently a couple of other class mates were interested in doing the speech. Personally I am not attached to doing the speech at all so am happy if there are others who would be interested. After 45 minutes we decided to have nominations on Monday morning at our early meting. it was a very interesting process where people were trying to do the right thing but didn’t exactly use the right methods. We also had much discussion on what special thing to do to thank our two trainers. In the end we came up with a plan that met everyone’s goals. It will be interesting to see what happens at our Monday morning meeting.