[nagdu] First dog concerns

[Chris Harrington]

Good afternoon List,
My name is Chris Harrington, and I have recently gotten an awesome
guide dog from the seeing eye named Biery. He is a male german
shepherd, and an extremely sweet dog. However, I am having some
worries about our bond and the future. He is a confident dog,
especially ware traffic is concerned. However, he is sensative as
well. During training at the seeing eye, I was traffic checked, and
Biery got me quite close to the car. He was hit with the news paper,
however the supervisor missed and hit him in the eye area. After that,
his confidence was down to nothing when it came to intersections. That
passed, and he bounced back to his confident self after about a week.
I was crossing the street in front of my college campus last thursday,
and came with in two feet of a car that was turning as I was crossing
the street. I could hear it turning in front of me beforehand, so I
kept the instinct to get out of the way down until I was up close to
it, at which time I panicked. I thought I felt Biery back up, but I
can't be sure. A gentleman saw me from across the street, and he came
out and let me grab an arm to get the rest of the way across, which I
accepted, because at that point, I wanted out of the street as quickly
as possible. From what the gentleman had told me, the dog veered me
out of the cross walk, but I wasn't in the intersection, because I
could hear cars going by on my left hand side. It's been extremely
hard for me to moove the trust from myself, to the dog, and with this
happening, I'm having even more trouble as far as trust goes. Will the
dog pick up on this and shut itself off from me? I'm also having some
trouble getting to "know" the dog if that makes any sort of sense...
He's not a verry playful dog, and I'm having a really hard time
figuring out what he likes and doesn't like. I hope I'm making some
sort of sense here, and I appolagize for the ramble, but this is
something I am really worried about.
Any suggestions would really really be appreciated.
Thanks,
Chris Harrington