[nagdu] Guide Dog Obedience

Fri Feb 5 22:39:31 UTC 2010

They taught us a obedience routine at GDB, which I would be glad to pass 
onto anyone who wants it, but I stopped the daily obedience when Lexia 
started doing the command before the words were half way out of my mouth. 
There were only a few commands, so not enough ways to mix them up, and it 
was just too predictable.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tamara Smith-Kinney" <tamara.8024 at comcast.net>
To: "'NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users'" 
<nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [nagdu] Guide Dog Obedience

> Michelle,
>
> Welcome!  My name is Tami (that's Tammy in case you're using JAWS), and I
> have a 3-1/2 year old owner trained poodle guide named Mitzi.
>
> Specific step by step approaches to the obedience issue would depend on
> where/how your dog was trained.  I don't know whether my methods would be 
> in
> the slightest useful, so I'll skip describing them to you for now. /smile/
>
> Whether this one lapse of his at home will carry over to his working
> behavior depends on the dog, I supposed.  I have heard the theory that off
> duty, at home behavior will carry over into guide work.  Had it shoved 
> down
> my throat, in fact.  When my 7-month-old training prospect arrived, I was
> having in home lessons from an living skills instructor.  I quite liked 
> her,
> and she was a good teacher, willing to adapt to my needs and learning
> methods.  She is also an O&M instructor, so before Mitzi arrived I asked 
> her
> for whatever information she could give about specifics I should consider 
> in
> case my new pup did turn out to have the right stuff for guide dog 
> training.
> She is sighted and has not worked around guide dogs, but with Guide Dogs 
> for
> the Blind in Boring, pretty much just down the street, the local agency
> instructors are quite familiar with the school and the staff, naturally. 
> So
> she told me quite a bit, gave me some advice to consider, etc., etc.
>
> Or so I thought!  Then the completely untrained pup came into my life, and
> the living skills sessions became all about how I *must* manage my dog
> precisely according to her instructions!  Her actual training experience 
> is
> through having a roommate with a lab who took a 5-week basic obedience
> course.  How she believed this qualified her to take over my new pup's
> training plan, I do not know, but she clearly did.  Sigh.  I would 
> patiently
> explain why I made the choices I did for these early phases of adjustment
> and training, and she began to threaten to stop instructing me altogether 
> if
> I didn't shape up and follow the rules.  Then she actually took matters 
> into
> her own hands one day and tried to force my dog to go lie down in the 
> corner
> of the instructor's selection, while I put myself between the clapping and
> foot stamping and other aggressive moves that were so freaking out my 
> pup...
> When the instructor left, I instructed her to not come back.
>
> Mitzi is my first guide dog, so I don't have much to compare with. 
> However,
> the house manners I chose to teach her are far more lax than the manners I
> expect of her when she's on the job.  We obedience exercises in the house,
> but not in the course of regular life.  She's always been good about 
> letting
> me put her food down unmolested, so I've never taught her to sit at 
> feeding
> time, for instance.  We live with another dog now, and occasionally give
> them wet food with their dinner, while the dogs work themselves up into
> airborne whirling dervishes.  So my roommate and I had to team up against
> them and have one of us work on getting them both to sit obediently while
> the other managed the wet food.  /lol/  So in that case, we do insist on
> their sitting until the food is down and we release them to eat.  They're
> making progress, but treating them to wet food is still something of an
> adventure.
>
> Mitzi, at least, has a very good sense of distinction between work and 
> home
> and park play.  I've always believed that dogs have better sense than we
> give them credit for anyway, but I am still very pleased with her
> adaptiveness.  Even before she decided to give up counter surfing at home,
> she would refrain when I started taking her into the neighborhood coffee
> shop.  Whew!
>
> I don't know if that is in anyway helpful to your concern that your dog 
> will
> begin to act up in public because of his lapse over the water dish.  My
> guess is probably not, but you know your dog, so my opinion is worth the
> paper it's printed on. /smile/
>
> Tami Smith-Kinney
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
> Of Michelle
> Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 1:48 AM
> To: nagdu at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [nagdu] Guide Dog Obedience
>
> Hi,
>
> I've got a question. I'm a first-time guide dog user, and have had my
> current guide dog for just over two years. He's good with his obedience
> commands most of the time, but when it comes to telling him to sit and 
> stay
> when I'm checking how much water he has in his container, or if someone 
> else
> has to go into the laundry for a few minutes for any reason and Troy is
> thirsty, I, or the other person, will tell him to sit and stay, but then 
> his
> compulsion to drink right now causes his obedience to go out the window.
> What do I do about this, so then he won't generalise this breaking of
> commands to other parts of his working and social life?
>
> Advice much appreciated,
>
> Michelle
>
> P.S. Even though Troy gets enough water to drink each day and has access 
> to
> it every day, when he wants water, he is so impatient that he can't seem 
> to
> sit and stay for as lo g as we need him to when it comes to checking his
> water container or going into the laundry for other reasons before letting
> him go for a drink. He breaks his stay before I or others leave the 
> laundry.
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