Kaline was a bit depressed his first day back from Party Central. Then he mostly got back to normal and my faith in him as a baby service dog was fully restored. Our first outing was to Walgreens, and he was superb.
I have mostly gotten his “new” vest (Juno's Petjoy harness vest) to fit right, and he looks really good in it. We practiced the usual things in the store: pressing the buttons for the door, not sniffing things, lots of loose-leash walking around. He only swatted Mom's little pull-cart once, so that's progress, right? At the end we randomly bought some vitamins that are supposed to help you sleep, and I had Kaline carry them all the way from the back of the store up to the checkout line. I even got a terrible video! You can't see the part where I held it out and told him “take it” and he did, but trust me, that also happened.
So that was really fun and uplifting.
Walks this week have been wearing me out for some reason. Soon they're going to tail off for the summer, and while that will be good for my body, it is not good for my anxiety (over income) or, obviously, my income itself. Hopefully we'll get some new pack members soon. In a couple weeks we are adding a new wee Labrador, so that will be lots of fun.
Juno had a nice outing to Red Robin with me and Dad last night, and of course she was perfect. I think she is getting the hang of her new harness (when I talk about her getting the hang of it, I mean that she is positioning herself right and pulling when asked without someone she likes in front of her). Despite the fact that our table really had no under to speak of, the girls one table over had no clue Juno was there until our waiter started to coo at her. (He was having a harried night, and Juno won't respond to that stuff from a stranger, so I just let him do it.) Pretty fun. I love it when people don't realize my dog is there—that's how it should be!
Today at training they were both good. Kaline is finally learning to do a recall without crashing into me or doing a drive by (to avoid the crashing) at the end. Hurrah! He also did really, really nice off leash heeling through this insane pattern Freddie had made up with many weave poles. They both were rock-solid on the recall with distraction—I found a tennis ball, hehe. Oddly, given that Juno is the only one of the two with actual (well, probable) retriever genes, Kaline is the one who really likes balls. So it wasn't surprising that Juno ignored the ball being tossed all along the line of waiting dogs, but I was really pleased that Kaline just looked at it and then looked back at me! Woohoo! When we were working the Labs and Goldens, a little different story, haha. Although with the gun dogs, all you have to say is No Bird and they're like, “Okay, must not chase moving object.”
Hopefully this weekend I'll get to do a lot of work with Kaline—there's a carnival at a local elementary school, we may go to the city, and we'll probably do our usual Sunday morning routine. We also need to focus on his learning positions around me and trying to develop his body awareness ... yeah, I know. Lots of luck on that last one!
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