Well we have a hitch, a glitch, a twitch… we have the flu. Or something. Andy came down with it a couple days ago. He's been feeling like hell, putting in short work days and going straight to bed when he gets home. I was hoping to escape it, but alas, no, this morning I realized that the mild ache and tiredness I was feeling yesterday wasn’t just old lady creaks and new dog stress. This morning I felt absolutely lousy and could barely crawl out of bed in time to be dressed and ready for Steve at nine.
It didn’t help that I didn’t get much sleep last night either. Andy and I agreed that during our training period, it will be best for him to take Trace as usual to his crate in our master bedroom, and for me to sleep in our front guest bedroom with Pat on tie-down.
Pat’s whining got in the way of that plan, at least the part about keeping him on tie-down. He whined continuously last night, even after Trace had gone to his crate for the night and was therefore out of sight and out of mind.
At first I tried to ignore it, but my nerves couldn’t hold out. I thought maybe he really needed to relieve himself again, even though I’d already taken him out for his 8 p.m. on-leash “busy time” relief session. I considered that Pat’s system might still be out of whack from jet lag. So, even though Steve said not to, I took Pat back out for another “busy-busy time!” He took a short leak, and seemed OK when I brought him back in. I put him on tie-down next to the bed, and I was just getting ready to take my CI off and hit my pillow when he started up again with his piteous puppy sobs. It was nerve-wracking. I suppose I should have just taken the CI off and gone to sleep — but with a new dog, it’s hard to really know what’s going on when he whines and cries like that. I almost called Steve, but it was late and I knew he was catching up on jet-lag-recovery sleep too. So finally I let Pat jump up on the bed, and he was a happy camper.
“No no NO!” Steve said, when I told him about it this morning. “Not good, not good at all.” First of all, Steve said, Pat is my guide dog, not my mate. “He works for you,” Steve said. “He needs to know with absolutely no question that YOU are the boss. Bosses do not sleep with their workers. They sleep with their mates. Letting your working guide dog up on the bed with you sends confusing signals.”
Steve emphasized his point with a story about his own experience training a dog when he was in the Marine Corps. (Yah, he’s a Marine, right down to the buzz haircut!) He’d kept the dog on tie-down next to his cot, but after a while he let the dog up on the cot, at his feet. Everything seemed fine, Steve said, until one night he woke up with the dog snarling and lunging for the throat of one of his fellow Marines who needed to wake Steve for some reason. “It turned out OK,” Steve said, “but if I hadn’t been able to get to the dog in time, he could have killed somebody.”
What was bad about the dog’s action was not so much that it acted protectively toward Steve, but that it had assumed the authority to attack — because sleeping on the cot with Steve gave the dog equal status to Steve. It’s possible, even probable, the dog would still have wanted to attack from tie-down if someone had disturbed Steve in their sleep. But, in a tie-down position, the dog knew that Steve was the boss, and would follow Steve’s orders. Even if the dog acted protectively while on tie-down, it probably would have been more of a warning growl and/or bark that would not have exploded into full-blown attack without Steve’s permission.
“OK I get it,” I told Steve. “But….” and I told him about April, and how I’d kept her on tie-down at night for two years before I allowed her up on the bed. I was staying at a hotel in Toronto, Canada, and my room was on the ground floor, with a sliding glass door that opened out onto a small patio and then the parking lot. It was late and I was relieving April out on the grassy gravel between the patio and the parking lot. All of a sudden I didn’t want to be out there. No reason I could explain, I just had a feeling, and I didn’t like it out there anymore. I hustled up April and got us back inside, locked all three or four locks and closed all the drapes, and made sure I was as secure and private as I could be.
Then I took a shower and got ready for bed. I was sitting on the bed, facing the curtained sliding glass door, wondering if I wanted to get up and get my journal from the table, or if I would just put April on tie-down, turn off the light, and hit the pillow. I decided to get my journal. As I began to rise from the bed, April leaned back against me and I fell back onto the bed. Surprised, I looked down and put my hand on her head and neck. Her fur was standing up, and I could feel her growling deep in her throat. I reached my left hand over to pick up my hearing aid from the bedside table and put it on.
April was definitely growling, very menacingly. She was staring fixedly at the door. I thought I heard a tiny little jiggle, as though someone was trying to open the door from outside. Before I could finish hearing the jiggle — before the jiggle was complete — my little dinky 50-pound yellow Lab exploded into a fit of ferocious barking that sounded like a pack of pit bulls. I’d never heard her bark like that before, or ever again afterwards. It must have lasted for only seconds but it felt like forever.
When she stopped barking, my ears rang in the silence. She walked up to the sliding glass door, sniffed each end, and then turned around and looked at me, as if to say, “It's OK now.”
If I had had April on tie-down a little away from the bed as usual, and I had not had my hearing aid oe when she started barking, I would have had no idea what was going on. That was the night I decided April was sleeping on the bed with me. I told Andy about it when we got back to Sacramento and off the plane. “We have to go get a king-sized bed so we have room for April,” I said. And we did.
Steve said it was still important that, at least for now, Pat be on tie-down, for all the reasons he had just explained. And I know he's right. The fact is, I was lucky with April. I’ve often said that April was much more assertively (as opposed to aggressively) protective of me than Trace. If someone were to attack me in front of Trace I’m sure he’d move in to protect me. But if someone were to attack me in front of April, I know she’d have torn his throat out.
I was lucky that when April turned over to me while we were still at Leader Dogs, and began to show her protective nature, my trainer was able to step in and show me what to watch for and how to keep April’s protective instinct under control. There were a few times when I had to correct April for growling at someone she didn’t like. There was always a good reason she didn’t like someone, but still, it was my decision what to do about that, not hers. When I got Trace, I was on the watch for signs of protective behavior once we had started to bond, and when i caught him growling and barking at a stranger in our dorm, I gave him one of the rare high collar corrections he ever got. I’ve never had to correct him for that again.
The upshot: Steve went out and got me a crate for Pat, and that’s where he’s sleeping at night from now on. Maybe someday he can get up on the bed once in awhile. But not now.
Back to the flu … we kept our workouts short today because I just don’t have the energy. But both of our workouts, as short as they were, were good. I only dropped two, maybe three, baseballs, and Pat’s work around some unusual sidewalk configurations that are typical here in Sacramento because of all our street trees was excellent. I only made him do one over again because he ran me into some bushes.
And he made an illegal executive decision to do a running left turn before I authorized it, so I made him do that over again too. He has to stop at the edge of a walkway and wait for me to tell him to turn before we do the turn. Later, I’ll command the running left turn, and then that will be our habit, but it will be a habit I choose, not one that he chooses. Still, I like his initiative — he's definitely smarter than the average bear.
And his curb work is great. He got every single one of them right again today.
So, no clicker training today, and no Gentle Leader work on ignoring varmints. However, I did make progress on cutting down on the whining, and enforcing acceptable behavior with Bella and Patches. The whining solutions: short, sharp leash corrections and “No!” and “Quiet!” when he whines. If he whines when I put him in the crate, go in and growl at him and tell him “No!” If that doesn’t work, then shake the crate aggressively and growl and tell him “No!” And if that doesn’t work, throw a blanket over the entire crate. His whining has cut down remarkably by the end of the day, and his reaction to the cats is improving too. I jerk him back hard, and give him a high collar correction every time he rushes at them (this is one of the reasons why I have him on leash and connected to me 24/7 when he is not on tie-down or in his crate for the next several months). And I make him get down on the floor, and when he whines, he gets the short sharp leash corrections and the “No! Quiet!!”
But he isn’t barking at them anymore. He’s just rushing at them. So, I claim progress there. Yep yep, we are patiently making great progress!!! At some point Patches or Bella will walk by and Pat will just look at them, maybe with great interest, but without any rushing or whining. And when that happens he will get a nice big fat jackpot reward.
It will all come together. I know it will. But I have to admit I’d forgotten how much work it is to work with a new and young dog. April really was a handful when I brought her home — she was only 16 months when I first got her, and I ended up keeping her on leash at all times for nine solid months. And I was a lot younger back then, too. Trace was a little older, 20 months, and I only kept him on leash for about 2 months. Pat’s three years old, and in a lot of ways much more mature and skilled than either April or Trace were, but I have a feeling he’s going be at least a six-monther on leash.
And although I knew I had to factor in the attention and care I still need to give Trace, I hadn’t factored in how emotionally draining it is to be working so intensely with Pat while at the same time concerned and paying attention to Trace. He’s really getting old and slow, has a big growth in his groin, and lots of those fatty lumps that Labradors are prone to. And he has his arthritic vertebrae and his palsied eyelid. He’s still his usual sweet mellow goofy self and loves his feeding times and carrot treats. I’m grateful he and Pat are getting along so well, and even more grateful that Trace is being such a good sport about it all. Way better than April was, for sure, when I brought him home.
OK, time to hit the pillow before the overwhelm hits me.
It didn’t help that I didn’t get much sleep last night either. Andy and I agreed that during our training period, it will be best for him to take Trace as usual to his crate in our master bedroom, and for me to sleep in our front guest bedroom with Pat on tie-down.
Pat’s whining got in the way of that plan, at least the part about keeping him on tie-down. He whined continuously last night, even after Trace had gone to his crate for the night and was therefore out of sight and out of mind.
At first I tried to ignore it, but my nerves couldn’t hold out. I thought maybe he really needed to relieve himself again, even though I’d already taken him out for his 8 p.m. on-leash “busy time” relief session. I considered that Pat’s system might still be out of whack from jet lag. So, even though Steve said not to, I took Pat back out for another “busy-busy time!” He took a short leak, and seemed OK when I brought him back in. I put him on tie-down next to the bed, and I was just getting ready to take my CI off and hit my pillow when he started up again with his piteous puppy sobs. It was nerve-wracking. I suppose I should have just taken the CI off and gone to sleep — but with a new dog, it’s hard to really know what’s going on when he whines and cries like that. I almost called Steve, but it was late and I knew he was catching up on jet-lag-recovery sleep too. So finally I let Pat jump up on the bed, and he was a happy camper.
“No no NO!” Steve said, when I told him about it this morning. “Not good, not good at all.” First of all, Steve said, Pat is my guide dog, not my mate. “He works for you,” Steve said. “He needs to know with absolutely no question that YOU are the boss. Bosses do not sleep with their workers. They sleep with their mates. Letting your working guide dog up on the bed with you sends confusing signals.”
Steve emphasized his point with a story about his own experience training a dog when he was in the Marine Corps. (Yah, he’s a Marine, right down to the buzz haircut!) He’d kept the dog on tie-down next to his cot, but after a while he let the dog up on the cot, at his feet. Everything seemed fine, Steve said, until one night he woke up with the dog snarling and lunging for the throat of one of his fellow Marines who needed to wake Steve for some reason. “It turned out OK,” Steve said, “but if I hadn’t been able to get to the dog in time, he could have killed somebody.”
What was bad about the dog’s action was not so much that it acted protectively toward Steve, but that it had assumed the authority to attack — because sleeping on the cot with Steve gave the dog equal status to Steve. It’s possible, even probable, the dog would still have wanted to attack from tie-down if someone had disturbed Steve in their sleep. But, in a tie-down position, the dog knew that Steve was the boss, and would follow Steve’s orders. Even if the dog acted protectively while on tie-down, it probably would have been more of a warning growl and/or bark that would not have exploded into full-blown attack without Steve’s permission.
“OK I get it,” I told Steve. “But….” and I told him about April, and how I’d kept her on tie-down at night for two years before I allowed her up on the bed. I was staying at a hotel in Toronto, Canada, and my room was on the ground floor, with a sliding glass door that opened out onto a small patio and then the parking lot. It was late and I was relieving April out on the grassy gravel between the patio and the parking lot. All of a sudden I didn’t want to be out there. No reason I could explain, I just had a feeling, and I didn’t like it out there anymore. I hustled up April and got us back inside, locked all three or four locks and closed all the drapes, and made sure I was as secure and private as I could be.
Then I took a shower and got ready for bed. I was sitting on the bed, facing the curtained sliding glass door, wondering if I wanted to get up and get my journal from the table, or if I would just put April on tie-down, turn off the light, and hit the pillow. I decided to get my journal. As I began to rise from the bed, April leaned back against me and I fell back onto the bed. Surprised, I looked down and put my hand on her head and neck. Her fur was standing up, and I could feel her growling deep in her throat. I reached my left hand over to pick up my hearing aid from the bedside table and put it on.
April was definitely growling, very menacingly. She was staring fixedly at the door. I thought I heard a tiny little jiggle, as though someone was trying to open the door from outside. Before I could finish hearing the jiggle — before the jiggle was complete — my little dinky 50-pound yellow Lab exploded into a fit of ferocious barking that sounded like a pack of pit bulls. I’d never heard her bark like that before, or ever again afterwards. It must have lasted for only seconds but it felt like forever.
When she stopped barking, my ears rang in the silence. She walked up to the sliding glass door, sniffed each end, and then turned around and looked at me, as if to say, “It's OK now.”
If I had had April on tie-down a little away from the bed as usual, and I had not had my hearing aid oe when she started barking, I would have had no idea what was going on. That was the night I decided April was sleeping on the bed with me. I told Andy about it when we got back to Sacramento and off the plane. “We have to go get a king-sized bed so we have room for April,” I said. And we did.
Steve said it was still important that, at least for now, Pat be on tie-down, for all the reasons he had just explained. And I know he's right. The fact is, I was lucky with April. I’ve often said that April was much more assertively (as opposed to aggressively) protective of me than Trace. If someone were to attack me in front of Trace I’m sure he’d move in to protect me. But if someone were to attack me in front of April, I know she’d have torn his throat out.
I was lucky that when April turned over to me while we were still at Leader Dogs, and began to show her protective nature, my trainer was able to step in and show me what to watch for and how to keep April’s protective instinct under control. There were a few times when I had to correct April for growling at someone she didn’t like. There was always a good reason she didn’t like someone, but still, it was my decision what to do about that, not hers. When I got Trace, I was on the watch for signs of protective behavior once we had started to bond, and when i caught him growling and barking at a stranger in our dorm, I gave him one of the rare high collar corrections he ever got. I’ve never had to correct him for that again.
The upshot: Steve went out and got me a crate for Pat, and that’s where he’s sleeping at night from now on. Maybe someday he can get up on the bed once in awhile. But not now.
Back to the flu … we kept our workouts short today because I just don’t have the energy. But both of our workouts, as short as they were, were good. I only dropped two, maybe three, baseballs, and Pat’s work around some unusual sidewalk configurations that are typical here in Sacramento because of all our street trees was excellent. I only made him do one over again because he ran me into some bushes.
And he made an illegal executive decision to do a running left turn before I authorized it, so I made him do that over again too. He has to stop at the edge of a walkway and wait for me to tell him to turn before we do the turn. Later, I’ll command the running left turn, and then that will be our habit, but it will be a habit I choose, not one that he chooses. Still, I like his initiative — he's definitely smarter than the average bear.
And his curb work is great. He got every single one of them right again today.
So, no clicker training today, and no Gentle Leader work on ignoring varmints. However, I did make progress on cutting down on the whining, and enforcing acceptable behavior with Bella and Patches. The whining solutions: short, sharp leash corrections and “No!” and “Quiet!” when he whines. If he whines when I put him in the crate, go in and growl at him and tell him “No!” If that doesn’t work, then shake the crate aggressively and growl and tell him “No!” And if that doesn’t work, throw a blanket over the entire crate. His whining has cut down remarkably by the end of the day, and his reaction to the cats is improving too. I jerk him back hard, and give him a high collar correction every time he rushes at them (this is one of the reasons why I have him on leash and connected to me 24/7 when he is not on tie-down or in his crate for the next several months). And I make him get down on the floor, and when he whines, he gets the short sharp leash corrections and the “No! Quiet!!”
But he isn’t barking at them anymore. He’s just rushing at them. So, I claim progress there. Yep yep, we are patiently making great progress!!! At some point Patches or Bella will walk by and Pat will just look at them, maybe with great interest, but without any rushing or whining. And when that happens he will get a nice big fat jackpot reward.
It will all come together. I know it will. But I have to admit I’d forgotten how much work it is to work with a new and young dog. April really was a handful when I brought her home — she was only 16 months when I first got her, and I ended up keeping her on leash at all times for nine solid months. And I was a lot younger back then, too. Trace was a little older, 20 months, and I only kept him on leash for about 2 months. Pat’s three years old, and in a lot of ways much more mature and skilled than either April or Trace were, but I have a feeling he’s going be at least a six-monther on leash.
And although I knew I had to factor in the attention and care I still need to give Trace, I hadn’t factored in how emotionally draining it is to be working so intensely with Pat while at the same time concerned and paying attention to Trace. He’s really getting old and slow, has a big growth in his groin, and lots of those fatty lumps that Labradors are prone to. And he has his arthritic vertebrae and his palsied eyelid. He’s still his usual sweet mellow goofy self and loves his feeding times and carrot treats. I’m grateful he and Pat are getting along so well, and even more grateful that Trace is being such a good sport about it all. Way better than April was, for sure, when I brought him home.
OK, time to hit the pillow before the overwhelm hits me.
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