A service dog is a fine tuned machine. From the day that we meet our dog the trainers tell each of us students that we must exercise our dog each day, not just take the dog for a walk, for a run but exercise their mind. Practice all of their commands, challenge the dog, teach them new commands, keep them at the top of his/her game. In Team Training we spend a lot of time learning about canine behavior and how to continue training our dogs. We learn that a lot of the commands that are the “standard features” on our dogs are building blocks for other commands or can be generalized into different areas or purposes.
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| Nin demonstrating a "Tug" at the office |
Let me illustrate this for you better. The dogs are taught to tug –I have mentioned this command before, he/she can tug on an object to pull open a door, drawer, etc… when I brought home Ivan (first dog). I, like so many others, had seen the beer commercials where the dog goes to the refrigerator, opens the door, pulls out the beer, closes the fridge, and brings the beer to the guy lying on the sofa. Cool! Ivan knew all of these commands all I had to do was teach him to string those commands all together. Then put a single command on the string, “BEER”! Brilliant! Ivan was smart but lacked a bit of a work ethic and so this process took awhile. I often ended up with cheese, water, soda, bread, fruit and the refrigerator never was closed but we made progress and I was pleased until the night I went to a concert and left Ivan alone in my apartment. Ivan was not really accustomed to being left alone but that night he did not seem to mind. I came home at about 2:00am, as I opened the door I found Ivan asleep in the middle of my bed and the wrappers of the contents of my refrigerator spread about my little studio apartment from the kitchen to my bed. The worst of it was the refrigerator door was still open! From that day on, I could not leave Ivan home alone without blocking his access to the refrigerator.
Since then, I have been a little reluctant to teach my dogs new tricks (as they say) that did not involve them playing dead when you made a gun with your fingers and said “bang” or flipping a biscuit off their nose, until Nin. Nin is smart. She learns things that I teach her in no time and has a tendency to learn things that I have not taught her without much difficulty; for example, how to open the office suite door and go for a walk in the museum, without permission or adult accompaniment. The thing with Nin that I seem to underestimate is that she is a prankster. I am not sure if dogs have that capability but if they don’t some canine behaviorist is going to have to spend a lot of time explaining this to me before I am going to believe it.
It all started one day when I was lying in bed, I was hot. My feet are the fastest ways to regulate my body temperature (like a bunny ears). If my feet are cold, I am cold. If my feet hot…well, you get it. I use to be able to just scoot my foot out of the covers until I was cool and then back under the covers they went and all was right with the world but over the last year I have lost more strength and this has become harder to do. So, I thought … (always the beginning of a bad plan) I will just have Nin “tug” my top blanket down a half way or even off the bed if I am too hot. Easy! This would simply be a modification of her “Tug” command, which is her favorite so it should be simple.
I called Nin over. She dutifully bounced over, I showed her the corner of the blanket and said, “Get it!” She did. Then I said, “Tug!” It took her a bit to figure out which way and where to tug, but she did and she got the blanket half way down the bed and I said, “Give!” Which means let go of the blanket, again, she did. It was beautiful. There was lots of praise and scratches behind the ears. She was perfect!
Fast forward to the next week, I was lying in bed and this time just wanted the blanket off. So I called Nin over and once again gave her the “Tug” command and “Tug” she did – off flew the blanket and she did not even come back for her praise, I said, “Good Girl!” and off to her bed she went. That was the end of my good Nin.
The next night I woke up in the middle of the night freezing because I had no blankets or sheets – nothing left on the bed they were all on the floor at the base of the bed and Nin was in her bed. A few days later, I was sleeping and my roommate was lying on our sofa when she heard rustling in the hallway, she got up to see what was going on to find my blanket pulled into the hallway onto the floor while Nin was running back to her bed. Wait, it does not end there! A few nights ago I was in bed watching TV and was almost asleep, I look down to see my blanket creeping ever so slowly down the bed when my remote control falls onto the floor and the back pops off. All of the sudden, without me saying a word, the remote slides up on the bed next to me, than the back slides up next to it, as I stare at remote in awe, my blanket starts sliding away again!
Moral of the story: Be careful what you teach you dog and always hold onto your blanket!
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