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.