Official Therapy Poodle!

After nearly two months (due to my insane schedule of Too Many Classes and Trials.), Perri and I were finally able to meet with our Therapy Dogs Incorporated tester and have our final observation visit, so Perri is now an official certified therapy dog!  I am so proud of her!

Our visit lasted about a half hour.  Perri licked some hands, charmed a Harley motorcycle guy recovering from a stroke, performed her tricks, and let many people pet her curly hair.  She was more willing to approach wheelchairs this evening but was still nervous about beds, especially beds with padding underneath of them (to cushion possible patient falls.)  I actually think that therapy visits will serve as another step down the road of Confidence Building for Perri.  She loves people but can be frightened by environment.  Repeated exposure to things that make her nervous should help her overcome those anxieties.

I feel like our world is really wide open now.  Lots of opportunities.  Part of me wants to link up with a local group of people that do therapy visits together, but my schedule: Crazy!   I have a friend with a standard poodle named Daphnee who is also certified, so it is very likely that we will go on some visits together and I am looking forwards to that.   There is a long term inpatient  therapy unit at the hospital where I work and they seemed interested in getting Perri on board for some visits once she was certified.  My local library has a "Paws and Pages" program where kids can read to dogs one night a month.  They do this on a Monday (agility class night for Molly!) and already have three dogs, so my own library may be a dead end.  But I am hoping that they could point me in the direction of somewhere that would like to use Perri as a reading dog.  She is very laid back and I think that snuggling up with some kids and having a story read to her would be right up her alley.

Woe is Me! Or, Isn't This Supposed To Be Fun?

Last Wednesday, I started "Fundamentals for Open" class, and the 3 weeks before that we attended the "Intro to Retrieve" class.  Perri's progress has been good in some ways, but in others I feel a little in over our heads.  I tend to overthink everything, by the way.

Intro to Retrieve was great but I am having a terrible time in getting Perri to progress past a short hold on the dumbbell.   I recently ordered a new dumbbell for her - this one will fit her mouth much better and it will be wooden and lighter.  The current dumbbell is an inch too wide and Perri does not seem to like the feel of the plastic in her mouth.  When my instructor presented her with a wooden dumbbell, Perri would not stop latching onto it.   So, waiting for that to arrive in the mail and in the meantime I am feeling defeated by our lack of progress.  (I know, it is not a race.)   Perri has so much fun working when she is feeling confident, but when she retreats into her shell it makes me feel sad.

The drowning-feeling continued at last week's class.  We all introduced ourselves and I admitted Perri's Novice NQs and her lack of confidence.  The instructor told me that this class might be overfacing Perri and I felt a bit discouraged by that.   However, this is me reminding myself, I am not taking this class to come roaring out of it having mastered and perfected all that is being taught.  This is my dog and I learning new things at our own pace.  This is me being taught how to teach my dog.  This is picking and choosing what Perri is capable of learning right now.  I learned with Ein, confidence is built in the tiniest of increments.  Confidence grows when you don't even know that it is growing.  Perri and I are gonna keep on doing what we can do and that's just that.

All that bravado aside, we covered in class: heeling around a turn, jumping into a heel pattern.   Both things that Perri has trouble with, of course.
We laid the groundwork for the Drop on Recall.  I am to leave Perri in a stay.   Place her target on the ground (Perri is good at nose targeting.  Thank you, agility!) and have her recall to me, touch the target with her nose and down.   Here is where I really did want to run away screaming.   Perri does not have a good Down.  At all.  She has been and still is my most difficult dog to teach the Down cue to.  So that pesky little job of re-teaching Perri "Down" with a new cue?  I really really wish that I had not procrastinated that. ("Down" is oft abused by my husband and everybody else that Perri encounters.)

 We were given instructions to practice all of those things and By The Way, Bring Your Dumbbells To Next Class.    Eek!  You mean the dumbbell that Perri doesn't like or the one that hasn't arrived in the mail yet??  Of course, these are my problems that have left me feeling like once again, I have bitten off more than I can chew.  Why did I procrastinate getting a proper dumbbell??

To make matters worse, I decided to go on my mini vacation and therefore ate up 4/7 of the days available to practice our daunting list of "homework".   Ahhhhhh!  To be fair, I did make several attempts to train Perri at the vacation-cabin, but she was overwhelmed and distracted.  So much for that.  

So imagine my delight when class was cancelled tonight!  A whole extra week to work with Perri!  And truly, since we have been home from vacation-cabin Perri has been very into training.   We are working on "Platz" (our new down cue).  Slow and steady.  Eternally working on our heeling but Perri does seem to have a good step-out with me when we start on a heel pattern.   My dumbbell has still not arrived in the mail but I have every confidence in Max200 that it will arrive with a few days to spare some orientation before next class.  And next week we get to play with the Broad Jump, so that is something to look forwards too!

So, I just need to calm myself down...remember this is at our pace...and enjoy myself.  Right?  RIGHT.

I further took advantage of class being cancelled tonight to schedule Perri's second Therapy Dogs Inc observation visit!  It was a quick one.   Many residents were not interested in a dog this evening.  There were a few that were really happy to see a dog however.  Perri was worried over the elevator again.  She approached the residents with more of a waggy tail this time around, and some residents she would just stand there and allow her whole body to be petted.   One woman had very advanced dementia and did not respond when we asked her if she would like to meet Perri.   She stared off into space.  But when Perri walked over to the bed and laid her head down, the woman's hand immediately reached out and petted Perri gently all over her head and ears.  Another woman, in the hallway, exclaimed "What's that DOG doing in here?" We explained that Perri is a therapy dog and would she like to meet her?  "God, no."   Can't please 'em all!  
One more observation visit and Perri will be official!

And if that isn't enough talking for one post, I am trying my best to groom Ein for the CDSP Obedience trial in November (Perri is entered also.)  We have been concentrating on the Figure 8 heel pattern, because that is Scary.  Heeling in a strange way around Scary People?  I don't know how that will go.  I have also noticed that Ein's fronts are crooked.   In Perri's Retrieve and Open class, we are working on Front position as well.  We bring the dog to front and then reward out of right and left hands.   With Ein, I have only rewarded from the right hand.   The result is that he comes in very crooked, anticipating receiving his reward from my right hand.   So, we are working on that.   I say it's all fun and games with Ein, that I will get what I get with him.  But Ein loves working so much, why not polish his fronts off to be more reliably straight?  After all, I trained him to come into front crooked due to my own ignorance.

Bad Corgi, Good Corgi.

P.S.  Einey will also be getting a dumbbell in the mail!  I really think that Ein would downright enjoy learning a dumbbell retrieve and I am pretty excited to work on that with him.

Therapy Dogs Incorporated (Test and First Observation Visit)

At long last, Perri had a test to become a therapy dog this evening.   And I could not be more proud!  I chose Therapy Dogs Incorporated as our organization after hitting more than a few walls with Therapy Dogs International (and really - per their new testing requirements, group stays?  C'mon now.   My dog can do a group stay, but is it a valuable behavior for a therapy dog?  Probably not.)

I like the way that Therapy Dogs Incorporated does things.   We were tested on how Perri tolerated having her entire body handled - body, all feet, ears, mouth, face, belly.  She didn't flinch.   We were tested on how she handled herself around another dog.   Loose leash walking with varying paces.   Perri's reaction to a person passing close to her.  Perri's reaction to a person walking with unsteady gait.   (She was interested but not fearful or barking.)
We passed!  YAY!

What I like most about TDInc is that they require three to four observation visits.   They don't just test you and let you loose.   Perri and I had our first observation visit tonight following our test.
I did not know what to expect from Perri.   I know: that she likes people.   That she can be frightened of noises or strange situations.  That she finds other dogs to be a little overwhelming during the greeting phase (she gave our partner Mo the Lab a huge submissive grin upon meeting him this evening.)

I was pleasantly surprised.   I can't gush about how Perri walked around the nursing home with some old world magic poodle attitude and deep understanding of the need to connect with people.   Perri was normal!   She did not bark.   She did try to jump up on a few people (employees who were askin' for it!) but I stopped her.   She wanted to sniff and possibly eat some crumbs.   She did like the smell of urinals.

But she also greeted more than a few people with waggy tail and gave kisses.   She was polite and charming.   She did her sit pretty trick many times and it made the patients happy.  She was interested in the entire environment.  People were full of compliments on how beautiful she was, but they were very unsure of her breed.  Greyhound?  Great Dane?   "Rabbit Dog?"   I proudly told them that this is a poodle under all that hair!

She was also overwhelmed by it.   There was an elevator.  There were alarm bells for patients who had "escaped" their bed or chair.  There were oxygen machines.   There were patients in wheelchairs.  There were patients with wounds.  We took a lot of breaks to do her tricks and reconnect.   Our tester took a moment to love up on Perri and rebuild her confidence, and she did keep remarking on how sweet Perri was.   She said that her dog has been doing this over nine years and she has noticed that a dog can work about an hour at most and then they are mentally done.   Perri worked about that long tonight.   This is going to be another of many ways for Perri's confidence to grow and for our bond to strengthen.

I am looking forwards to our next two observation visits.   I love that this organization requires supervision for your first few visits.   Doing this is intense for me and I don't know what I am doing.   Sure, it doesn't sound that difficult in theory.   But I appreciate an experienced handler watching me and my dog and showing us how it is done and reminding us of the rules.   It is helpful and an excellent way to "get our feet wet".  

I should probably teach Perri another trick very soon!