Assistance dog

Yip, yip, yipeeeeeeeeee! Wooooo! As K and I strolled out toward the meadow this morning, a lone coyote serenaded us. It was a perfect morning for a song - frost made the ground crunch under my feet but the sun warmed K's chocolate fur quickly. K and I found a rock and soaked up our concert. So many people hate and fear coyotes. Not me. As long as my dogs don't chase them, I enjoy having them around.

A little later, R and I mountain biked together. But first, R requested that I straighten out a point that has upset him. Some readers assumed that it was R who launched himself at me and sent me into a back flip. In fact, it was not. It was a neighbor dog, a young golden retriever. R has requested that you all notice how mature and poised he looks in the photo below.

In fact, R and I have spent many hours training together since he was diagnosed as having obsessive-compulsive disorder. His training is a mechanism to engage and tire out his brain, and thereby reduce some of his obsessive behaviors. One of the training exercises that we've focused on is off-leash heeling, with a goal of having a solid off-leash heel next to my bike. He has learned it so fast. Below, he was in an off-leash heel at the end of our ride today. I teach a right-side heel because it's most convenient on trails and sidewalks. I am so happy I am that he is learning this key skill for mountain biking!

We also practice the FUN stuff in our training. R thinks that recalls rock! Below, he hurtled toward me through a grove of naked aspen trees.

And, a little later, he abandoned a rabbit search to wend a tortuous route to me through scattered aspen trees, ending with a leap over a fallen limb.

Even at the end of one of these fiendishly fast recalls, R skids to a halt before running into me!

I do some of our training in the evenings, instead of the longish evening hike that we usually take when K is healthy. I train the Duo together. One dog holds a down-stay while I work with the other. I switch between them frequently. Below, the Duo was in training position, except that R appears to have dozed off.

One of the games that we've played recently is "pick up and deliver" any object that I point to. K is VERY experienced at this game because she served as my assistance dog when I had three joints in my lower back fused about five years ago. I couldn't reach anything on the ground for months. K picked up anything that I dropped, including easy things like socks and very tough metal things like spoons or keys.

Or even a stapler...

Really, no object is too tough for K to pick up. R is learning fast, partly because he's jealous that his sister can do things that he can't. I'm focusing on hard plastic objects with R right now and saving the metal ones for a little later. No worries - he's a genius so I'm sure that he'll be picking up hammers and wrenches before I know it!

Training my dogs is so much fun. It is a surprise gift of K's convalescence that I resumed playing training games with the dogs almost every evening.