Knightley needs practice working outside, nice walk, new (used) car and NEED A WEEKEND AWAY!

9 months 4 weeks 1 day old


Well it has been quite a busy weekend and I am terribly tired. Hubby and I went to the shopping mall yesterday and took Knightley. We needed a few bits and pieces, and hubby needed to swap a bracelet he'd got for me for our anniversary for a smaller size (obviously he thinks I have fat wrists!). Knightley did very nicely and got lots of attention as usual. We practiced our new 'flat' - the new cue for down. It was great, no delay, obeyed on every cue with no problems after starting with a bit of shaping. It's looking like I am going to have a solid down, hopefully for Knightley's whole life. Now time to start proofing it with even more distractions.

We then went and looked at some used cars. Our current car is getting pretty old and needs replacing but our finances aren't yet at the stage where we can buy a brand new car. So we looked around, found a possibility or two, but decided that there were some more cars across town we wanted to look at. I was absolutely exhausted after walking around a shopping mall and then a bunch of car lots. Knightley had been pretty well behaved up until then but as my attention was going and I was walking slower and slower he started misbehaving a bit. Of course that is the time I want him to step up and become a solid unmovable object! So he really did the opposite unfortunately and lost his focus. Last weekend when he helped me through my migraine he did great and focused despite me completely off in la-la pain land. However this time was outside, and Knightley doesn't focus well outside at all. So while it was very unfortunate he couldn't help me when I needed it, it shows me what I need to focus on. He can obviously be trusted a little to keep it together inside when I am not able to focus myself, but outside is another matter entirely.

Knightley meeting a lovely older female Golden on our walk
today. Knightley pretty much loses his mind when he meets
other dogs - he just loves them so much!

He woke up with a bit of a bad tummy this morning, so hubby and I took him for a good wandering walk where he could empty his poor tummy if need be. After the horrible weather earlier this week there was a good stream of water flowing in the storm water drain that runs by our house, and it's pretty good and clean so I let Knightley romp in it. We met another Golden Retriever on our walk today, a 12 year old female. Knightley ran around her like an idiot, trying to get her to play with him... trying and failing really. It made me realise that Knightley really is just about fully grown in size, although he has an awful lot of coat growing to go!!

My very happy rather wet Knightley.

He absolutely loves these walks. Since winter has come along it gets dark too quickly to get to the dog park more than once or twice a week. So I bought a flexi type leash (a leash that retracts and goes up to 5 metres in length) so that we could have walks along grassy areas and he could run around sniffing and just generally having a ball. Unfortunately I can't yet trust his recall there as it's a place where lots of other people walk their dogs, cycle, and so on.... and Knightley just loves people and dogs far too much. One day we'll get there. I don't approve of flexi leashes anywhere but where they will cause no possibility of harm to people when extending or retracting. As the lines even for a big dog are quite thin, they can even cut flesh when extending or retracting. If you only ever use the retractable/extending aspect of the leash when there are no people around you, and keep the leash locked in a fixed position of 180cm (6 foot) or less at all other times I think they can be useful. It certainly gives him the chance to get a bit of exercise but I can still walk very slowly. They can be especially valuable tools for those with service dogs who are permanently in a wheelchair, as they need many different lengths of leash throughout the course of a day.

Dashing through storm water at a breakneck pace. He's definitely
a water dog!

Speaking of wheelchairs, I have hip injections tomorrow that are supposedly meant to help my poor hip but past experience leads me to expect a week of virtual immobility. Whether after the tissue damage has healed there will be some temporary improvement is anyone's guess really. I'll be relying on Knightley's retrieve a whole bunch. I also don't want to skip my work on Thursday/Friday but certainly by Thursday I don't expect to be all that mobile. I could use my walker I guess but I am inclined to take my wheelchair. It's a heavy steel cheap thing I got when I first got sick but it's comfortable at least. I've been wanting to get a good quality lightweight wheelchair for a while now, but to get funding assistance from the government I need to see an occupational therapist, and I know to see the hospital ones the waiting list is pretty long. I've been thinking about another option so I may look into it. Whenever I am flaring and hubby and I need to go out, we take the chair.... but it is so heavy I can barely push it myself, especially if I am particularly sick. I'd also like the option of having Knightley help me with the movement of a wheelchair, in which case I should be minimising weight and resistance as much as possible.

A rather blurry photo of what we hope is our new car as of
tomorrow. LOTS of room for our big boy in the back!

Anyway, after our walk today Knightley's tummy seemed better, so we decided to take him with us to check out the cars over the other side of town. The big news is we think we have found ourselves a new (used) car! We took it for a test drive, and there were a couple of electrical problems, but if they are fixed to our satisfaction then we will go ahead with it. It's a stationwagon for a couple of different reasons, one of which that Knightley can go in the boot/wagon bit and get lots of room. It is pretty much exactly what we want, so we're going back tomorrow with a couple of other people to make a final decision. Unfortunately it will be after the local anesthetic injection from injecting my hips wears off and I'll be in a bad way... but it's just the way the world works out!

I've been wanting a holiday for a while now, but the state of our current car (not great, needs a lot of maintenance to be completely sound) has put me off a bit. However I think a new (used) car needs to bond with us and have a trip down to the coast! There's a pet friendly farm (with four very friendly border collies apparently) that has cabins and rooms, which I've been wanting to visit for many months that looks wonderful. I really need to get away - I haven't left Canberra since we travelled around temperament testing puppies in order to find Knightley. I wouldn't really call that a holiday though, and before that I left Canberra for my wedding a whole year ago in England........ it's definitely time for a weekend away!!

So, a very long very tiring weekend with several painful days to come. I need to get a semi-early night, so I'll be off now. *waves byebye*

A 'new' down, lifting crutches, a migraine, and a good shop trip

8 months 4 weeks 2 days old

Firstly, just a quick note - the 7th Assistance Dog Blog Carnival submission date has been extended due to lack of entries (mine was the only one!). So, if you have a service/assistance dog, if you raise puppies for programs, if you have a partner with a service/assistance dog, or if you're an interested member of the public with something to say about assistance dogs....  As long as you have access to a blog, and reply to the topic (it has changed a bit with the extension), you are very welcome to participate in the Blog Carnival. If you're interested (you should be!), go to http://playswithpuppies.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/adbc-call-for-submissions-take-2.html

I'm working on training a 'new' down with Knightley. The cue is flat!, which is nicely different from boring down. I am trying to resist luring it (using a piece of food to urge to dog into a down position) as that will make for a weaker behaviour. I did a fair bit of luring around the first time, I have to say, but I was still a clicker novice and Knightley and I weren't very good at shaping together. So now he kinda gets clicking a fair bit more, I'm going all the way back to Level 1, and getting myself a brand new shiny down with shaping. I'm also going to try (and I mean try - with his level of distraction outside), to shape it outdoors as well. This will lead to a super strong behaviour.

I did something similar with his cue to go into his crate. Once again, I had lured quite a bit and slowly as I stopped luring and started treating only, then even faded the treats..... eventually the behaviour fell apart. I mean, the cue still worked about 70% of the time, but I had to repeat myself an unacceptable number of times. So I retrained the behaviour with mostly shaping, and a new cue (instead of crate! the new behaviour was box!). He is much more reliable now, and is faster going in too. So far his flat is a much faster, more prompt behaviour than his old down, although if I need him in that position at the moment I am asking for a down until flat is completely trained.

A couple of days ago some cord loops arrived for my crutches, so that in order to lift them off the ground so that I can then get them (if they fall, or if I am forced to put them on the ground somewhere) Knightley can grab the loops. I have put some work into trying to get him to grasp the crutches themselves, but for whatever reason he has a bit of a phobia. Perhaps I have accidentally side swiped him with one before and now he's a bit leery of them? Or he just doesn't like holding cold metal in his mouth? Either way, these loops will work if all I want is him to lift them up for me. So far he is nicely happy to hold the loops, but we are taking it slowly. He has never really held anything of any weight in his mouth during our sessions - although you should see the size of the branches he likes to carry on our walks!!

I'm recovering from a migraine I got two nights ago. Pretty sure I've beaten it but it wasn't what I needed! I really hoped that Knightley would alert to my migraines naturally, as often I have little warning before they hit - sometimes quite savagely. However, so far I have seen no sign of a natural alerting ability. He certainly reacts to me and my moods when I am especially sick, but doesn't give any warning, unfortunately. I do wonder whether migraine alerting can be trained. I certainly know dogs can be trained to alert for conditions like diabetes and other blood sugar related conditions. I've heard about it for heart conditions too. I haven't actually heard about it for epilepsy though, and that is a migraine sufferers nearest comparison. These days they say migraines are indeed related to seizures. Oh well, in the future I shall look into it.

Last night I took Knightley up to (and inside, as we have permission) the local shops briefly and we really worked hard on getting a nice loose leash and keeping a solid 'service dog walk'. At first I was by myself, but then hubby joined me. It was really quite easy getting him to focus and be nice and loose without hubby there, but when hubby arrived things did go out the window a bit. He often walks a bit ahead of me (I am veeerrry slow) and so Knightley thinks he should be keeping up with his Daddy, not dawdling on with his slowpoke of a Mummy. He got rather frustrated when everytime he tried to rush forward to Daddy, he ended up further away because I would walk backwards. He did get the message though, and he settled down walking beside me, nice and solid, plod plod plod. His sniffing was at a minimum, and he was in general just very polite in his behaviour. I was very happy with him. I have been thinking about teaching a no-sniff cue... but I may talk about that later.

For the next bunch of posts I'm going to spend a bit of time answering some of the regular Google queries that I get. Some of them I already answer a bit in my posts, but I'll do some short posts answering them explicitly because there are obviously people looking for information they are struggling to find - which I can answer. So when I leave my normal format, don't be surprised.