Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 9

Last Updated on: 25th September 2013, 10:15 am

It’s Monday again. Drag drag drag. I’m so tired. And another week is beginning. I’m still worried about that missing key cap. It would make me happy if someone found it, and not in some dog’s poop either.

Poor Amy. Dynamo puked this morning. What’s with all the sick dogs? I guess if they all came from the kennels that’s a fine place to pick up bugs, so as long as they’re just little bugs it’s ok. Some other dog hurled in the relieving circle. Poor puppy.

Breakfast sounds weird. Vegetable something. Lunch is grilled steak of some kind with a bunch of veggies and dinner is Chicken Parmesan.

Today is a busy day. Oy yoy yoy. Two lectures in the morning, then we have to do obedience on route! What the hell? Then pooping and watering and lunch, and this afternoon, it’s a lecture on advanced corrections? Huh? More corrections? Then tonight it’s dinner, and a workshop on ear cleaning and heelling practice with a gental leader. Gimme gimme gimme a gental leader! That helped to reduce the sniffitude with the Babsy pup. Then it’s relieve and fall down.

Alright, time to eat this mystery breakfast. I’m sure it will be good.

It was a long day, but a good day. First off, I found that key cap, safely on my bed. Yea, no dog ate it! Breakfast was good, a little weird, but good. The lectures were short, one about orientation and learning routes, and one about leaving puppy unattended. Then we went to town, and I finally got the basic route straight! Now if only I could master the damn turns from dorm to bus! I think I’ve got them now, but now it’s just a matter of getting them down.

One of the retrains, Deborah, is staying in our hall. She’s only here for a week, can you believe it? So she’s in our training, for some reason I’m not sure of.

They took Dynamo to the vet, brought him back, and for some reason his tests will take a couple of days! So my poop test took an hour, but this stuff takes a couple days? What? Meanwhile, Amy has to restle Dynamo into the relieving circle because of his need to pee. The poor woman’s frustrated.

So lunch was good, and then we found out about the advanced stuff. What it was was showing us the collars we can use if the regular collar just doesn’t work. There was an evil-looking prong collar, a nylon collar that just sits higher on their neck, and the good old gental leader. Autumn hated the look of it and I was just like gimme gimme gimme! They fitted it to my woofer. Let’s see if we need it. But I’m glad I have it. So it was relieve and head for the bus and do the basic route again. Holy crap she felt faster this time. I had Brenda the O and M because they were short-staffed today, and she said she didn’t look any faster than this morning, it was my stamina. But she didn’t blow a single curb. She blew a couple curbs this morning, mostly up curbs, but there was no curb-blowage this afternoon. I had to tell her to be careful once because she made my right foot go off the curb and once I thought she was going to take me into traffic, but it was all good in the end. It was raining this morning, but this afternoon the sun came out and it got nice, but not before some people got soaked. Then I fed her and did the usual ritual.

I ran into Becky the counsellor. She can make you melt before you even know you’re having trouble. She’s like how are things going? I’m like good, she’s good. She goes how are you? She does that and it can just turn you to mush!

So then I went to the room here and took food past some retrains trying to get their dogs to heel. Oo I’m providing food distraction. Well I’d better run. Chimes are about to ring.

Well, the chimes didn’t ring. Oh well, supper was good. When it was over I brushed her teeth, and then we learned how to clean ears! It’s so easy! You put this stuff on some cotton, you shove it in their ear and you take it out. Repeat for other ear. Beauty. How come Ottawa doesn’t do ears?

I helped Carmen print a letter she has to send to her landlord, then we sat on her patio and had a long talk. I really like her. She just knows people.

Man the dogs were nuts tonight because all the retrains got their dogs today. Holy crap. Trixie likes Belamie a lot. She licked his ear, the goofy head. Oh, and we also did heeling practice with the gental leader, and I’m still not sure how to do corrections because she didn’t do a single thing wrong. She heeled perfectly. She may end up wearing it.

We practiced the song again. Carmen’s hillarious, just the way she directs things.

That’s about it. I’m crashing now.

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