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| Photo by Paul Dols |
Chuckles and his new mom are now an official team! The graduation ceremony for Chuck and 14 of his friends was this past weekend. We got to be reunited with Chuck before the ceremony and then walk him up the stage to hand him over to his momma. Chuck has already been living with his new mom for almost 4 months as they have been diligently practicing their skills at home and out in public.
Most of his job involves retrieving. He retrieves her crutches, her prosthetic leg, and things she drops. Chuck also braces to help her get off the floor or out of a chair, and opens doors using the push plates. And his absolute favorite task, and the one most helpful to his new mom, is tugging the laundry basket out of the closet, out the apartment door, down the hallway, and to the laundry room. That is quite the distance!!!
Fi has always been in love with the ferrets and it seems as though she has finally won them over. Opie will still bite her and refuse to let go at times (I always laugh as I walk over to rescue her!) but Zoe is falling in love. I guess she just has a thing for labs as she's starting to do the same thing to Fiona as she did to Chuck. It's just not quite to the same level as cuteness, yet.
I found this video I had made of Chuck and Zoe awhile back but never got around to uploading and posting it. It almost makes me miss the Chuckles, almost.
Chuck's xrays are good so we have 7 days left of the dude before he meets his client. His parting gift to me is getting tapeworms. Lovely. My guess is he ate a baby bunny out in the yard :(
Well it's official. Chuck has been matched with a client as a mobility assist dog pending the results of his xrays. They will hopefully be starting work at the end of the month.
The boys went to the puppyraiser picnic yesterday for the service dog organization.
I haven't made any goals the past few winter months but despite the little bit of snowflakes I saw this morning I'm hoping spring is here.
April progress:
- The little bit I did was trick training. I am close to finishing up Chuck's limping and then quickly taught him to bow.
- Lance and I are still struggling with getting him to hold an object in his paws. I think he understands the goal but is having a really difficult time holding the object tight enough without bringing his paws lower. Of course if he lowers his paws the object falls.
-Also struggling with the back leg backwards limp. Lance likes to grumble a lot at me when working on it :) Sometimes I've gotten up to 3 little steps backwards but mostly we have a hard time with 1.
- Vito hasn't done much. Most of the time he's still not wanting to eat. I've still done some work with training him to holding an object in his paws despite his unwillingness to eat the offered food. Vito always begged with his paws straight in the air so had a hard time learning to balance with his paws down. Doing better and is grabbing the object in close, but often he falls backwards :) I also did a little work with duration with paw over the nose.
Every evening the dogs work for their dinner. Lance goes first or he starts trembling and is just pathetic. Then Vito. And well Chuck gets a little bit of training too. But Chuck isn't as careful with his kibble as the others. I guess that whale of a mouth he has just isn't as accurate as it would seem as kibble is always falling to the floor that he misses. Once on the floor Chuck some how thinks it's a leave it even though I always release him to it. Bless his tiny lab brain.
I finally compiled a video of the Chucklet from footage taken around his birthday. I like how it actually makes me look like I train the dude.
Chuck spent a good portion of his birthday in a crate at the agility trial. But we made it up to him by giving him a pigs ear when we got home.
February Progress:
Another lazy month. I need spring to get here!!! Did manage to get some work in but the majority of their dinners have been fed out of a dish.
1. Tricks- I wanted to continue Lance's work on holding a toy in his paws but instead I ended up working more on duration of his hind leg lifts. I also restarted adding in nose targeting while holding his leg up in hopes of getting a hind leg limp. I found it works better using a target instead of my hand for targeting. I think Lance is really starting to get it! He doesn't need my hand pointing to his back leg anymore and will hold it for several seconds. Still a bit confused about the multitasking but is doing well. Who knows if it will lead to limping though!
Vito I did a little work on the handstand but not much. He just really wasn't into working for his dinner much this past month and was lacking energy. He did learn how to flip on the low lightswitch at work. Not a real one though, he's too short.
Chuckles I did actually free shape a trick without a prop! At least the start of one. We're working on limping with his front leg and are currently on duration of his front left paw while in a stand.
2. Scent articles- I did start work on them again although not as much as I'd like. Lance has been stressing about them so I've gone back down to a really small pile and standing close by. It seems to be helping and Lance is happier about them again. Vito continues to have no issues with this at all.
3. Halts- No idea how to fix Vito's bumps into me. Haven't worked on it since I don't have a plan.
4. Fronts with the db- Vito actually is coming in closer on his fronts with an object. Not all the time, or even most of the time, but there are moments where I actually have what I want! I don't know how since I haven't thought of any new approaches. Still a major work in progress.
5. Gloves- I did work on them maybe once a week with Vito. So far the shaking of the glove seems to have disappeared!! We're working on really speeding up the return and fingers crossed it's eliminated that glove shake.
March Goals
1. Running contacts and more running contacts. I swear it's all I'm doing now.
2. I don't know. I'm in a winter funk. No more snow!
I've been bad, it's already a week into the shortest month and I haven't thought about my goals at all. I also rarely looked at January's goals so it's a wonder I accomplished anything at all. I'm going to go ahead and blame Avery as that knocked out almost 2wks of training with the boys.
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| Chuckles wants a light. |
The past week and a half we have been fostering little Avery. Avery is another service dog in training whose official puppy raisers didn't want to pick up until they turned in their current dog for final training. She just turned 16wks.
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