Weekend Reflections

Well, it's the end of the first weekend here at the Seeing Eye school. I thought I'd take some time to write about how things are going with little Aladdin.

To begin with, I'll say that things are going extremely well. He and I are bonding very well and very quickly. WE did our first solo route today, and he worked very well for me. He enjoyed my praise and he listened to what corrections I needed to give him, though they were few and far between. He seems to need to sleep a lot, but he's starting to perk up a bit as the days go by. This has been a very big change for him, getting used to me and to his new room. Only imagine how he'll be when I bring him home! Wow!

Add to all this positivity the extremely supportive nature of the staff and other students here, and you have a great mix of factors which will produce success. Every aspect of life at the school is orchestrated to expose you and your dog to all sorts of situations. For instance, even the seating at dinner is changed up as the days go on so that the dogs eventually have to work through more and more complex courses of tables and people and food on tables to get to your table. First, you're seated very close to the front of the room. Then, once you've had the dogs for a few days and are using their harnesses in the building, your seats are moved firther into the back of the room. Of course, at lunch on week-days, all the staff of the school will be eating in that front part. This is nice for them but it's really so that you and your dog can get used to working in a crowded restaurant-like setting.

I don't know what else I can really say, except that I love the fact that I know now what is involved in using a guide dog. It made it easier for me to begin to trust Aladdin more quickly than I was able to trust my first dog. As a result, we are both more confident out on the streets, and that's a big deal to the dog to see your confidence. It will translate to him or her and will make him or her want to work for you because you're giving him or her clearly-defined goals and expectations.

The thing I decided on coming here was that I would do my best to be the process. I mean, I would do my best to leave myself out of it in a certain way and to simply do whatever is being thrown at me. I might ask questions occasionally, but I am determined to let the instructors teach me and also to let the dog teach me. After all, he's just been freshly trained, whereas I have had years of bad or lazy guide-dog habits to undo. The thing is that there's no point in being disappointed in myself for those habits or in being frustrated with the dog. I just have to let the process be what it is and to trust it. They know what they're doing here. They've been doing it a long time and yet their training methods have not stagnated. They are always doing research into animal behaviour and psychology, and the knowledge that all the instructors here have is phenominal.

So, I suppose I'll end this for now. However, I just wanted to say that things are going very well so far and I'm very happy with my new little dog with the big, beautiful head.

The Dog is Here!

Well, the once and future canine is now very present. All things being equal, this dog will be the dog I'm going home with at the end of the course. he is a little black Labrador Retriever named Aladdin. I met him at around 2:00 PM and we've spent the day getting to know each other, or well, beginning to get to know each other. He is already beginning the process of bonding to me, though it will likely be somewhat slow going at first. The real tests don't start till tomorrow when we actually begin working the dogs in harness. For now, however, he actually handles his food times very well. I thought he would go nuts for the food, but he is very polite and waits till I tell him to take it. Then, being a Lab, he eats it at ninety miles per second per second. However, the important thing is that he does not charge me when I bring him his food. I want to try my best to encourage this politeness, as I know only too well how easily Retrievers of any stripe can become fixated on their food.

Of course, I'm jumping the gun here. There is no telling how the dog will work out until we get out onto the streets with them. We had to learn to put special boots on their paws today to protect them from all the salt and sand. These ones are even better than the ones I had for Rocky. They were sort of like moccasins, but these actually have a tread on them and look just a little more heavy-duty.

Also, I notice that their food bowls are much smaller this time around. I still have the ones I used with Rocky, and of course I could keep using them if I want, but I may get rid of them or keep them in case someone might want them for something. These ones are just that much more compact and I like them very much.

Another lovely change is that there is now no longer a gradual working up to us measuring the food and feeding the dogs by ourselves. From the beginning, we get a bin of food in our rooms and we just do it right off the bat. I like this change, though I wonder whether first-timers like it or don't. I remember thinking during my first time that I certainly was able to measure and portion out my dog's food, so why wasn't I allowed to do it right away, but of course, you have to do your best to trust the process as it's happening and not to question it unnecessarily.

Being here can be a very spiritually beneficial experience. You are forced to do your best to put aside your ego for the sake of an animal who looks to you to show him or her exactly what is required in this new situation. I mean, from the time the dogs are born, they go through so many changes! First, they have to leave their litter at about seven weeks of age and be placed with a foster family. This family takes care of them sometimes for as long as a year and a half. Then, as they've been aclimatized to this family, they are taken away from them and put into the training program here at the school. From there, they bond with their trainers. Usually, your trainer is the one who trained your dog. They spend four months getting to know this trainer, and then, boom! They are placed with a student here at the school and have a month or less in which to begin the process of bonding as a team with that student.

This is all simply to say that the first few days with a new dog can never really be smoothe. They don't know you from a hole in the ground and you have to earn their trust and their respect. Rocky, my big fluffy Golden was very easy to work with from the start. He tested me at points, but his major problem was confidence. He just needed lots of encouragement and praise.

It's too early to tell how Aladdin will do. He's finding heeling for me difficult, but it isn't unmanageable. We just have to learn each other's rhythms and rhymes, and that will likely really take about a year or so to fully master. All I know now is that he's very affectionate and I think will want to interactively play a bit more than Rocky ever did. Rocky played with other dogs, but he really didn't think it right to play with humans somehow. He'd forfeit the game as soon as you touched one of his toys. I admit that it will be nice to have a dog who is more interactive in his playing.

I know I'm mentioning Rocky a lot in this post, and I likely will continue to mention him. I'm trying to get all the comparisons out of my head as best as I can, though Aladdin is so different from Rocky that really, it's apples and oranges. I can't wait to see what his working pace is like. I have the sense that it might be somewhat faster than Rocky's was, or certainly somewhat faster than what Rocky's was near the end of his working life. I suppose we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Oh, and an interesting fact about the crate training. They began crate training the dogs when the students had to stay in a hotel while the building here was being renovated because of Hurricane Sandy and such. So, they couldn't just have the dogs loose in the rooms and neither could they install what they called a bed-chain, which is what we would hook the dog to during the night or when we couldn't hold the leash while we had to do something. So they used the crates as a substitute and discovered that the dogs really responded well to them. They are soft crates, so more like a play-pen (I think they're called play-yards now) with a roof on it and a zip-up door in the side than like actual cages. We also still have our mutt-mats for the dog's bed which we used to get before. All in all, I think it's a good system.

Now, I'm very very very tired, and I want to crash. So, until I write again, this is Scheherazade (I mean Sara) signing off for now.

Finally Arrived

Where to begin? I suppose at the beginning would do as well as any for a place to start.

After a day of snow-storms and chaotic flight reschedulings, I'm finally here at The Seeing Eye. I'm a day late, but by no means a dollar short. I actually forgot how awesome this place really is. The instructors are just amazing people. They will challenge you, they will laugh with you, and they will even cry with you if you need them to. (I have not needed this as yet, of course, but I had forgotten the full extent of their amazingness till now.)

I think we have a great group of people. There are two people whom I know in my class, and that's amazing. The last time, there was no one I knew. Of course, that was just fine with me, as meeting new people is a joy of mine, but it's nice to have some people whom I know whom I will be able to talk to during what promises to be an emotional rollercoaster of a few weeks.

We will be getting our dogs tomorrow afternoon, so far as the schedule stands at this point. It really depends on whether we can get Juno walks done in town tomorrow morning or not. Snow has hampered the efforts so far, not to mention late arrivals like myself. Juno walks are something the instructor does with you to determine how fast you like and how much of a pull you will need the dog to generate as you go. You use a harness handle and a leash and the instructor has one end and you have the business end, and you command Juno, the imaginary dog, and the instructor walks as though he or she is the dog. (Don't worry. They don't do this on all fours.) The point is simply to assess your pace and to do the absolute best in matching you and a dog in terms of pace and pull and gait and such.

The dorm rooms are very well equipped. They have changed somewhat since I was here last. They now have mini fridges that we can use if we want to. They also have Serius Satelite Radio and such. One big change is that there are now dog crates in the rooms. We didn't train using crates before. I rather like the crate idea because it's a nice little space for the dog to make his or her own. I'm hoping I don't have to bring the crate home. I doubt I will have to. We'll see however.

As you can tell, my writing is not up to snuff--or sniff, I should say perhaps. This is because I am rather tired and have to get to bed. So, I will close this post for now and I will write more tomorrow. Suffice to say that I love this place just as much as I loved it before, and I can't wait to get out there and work.