[nagdu] An achievement with Taylor

[Lisa]

Hello everyone,

A while ago, I asked all of you what I could do to keep my dog from being so 
excited in public places. The main problem was he just wouldn't lie down for 
more than a minute. He would get up and wanted to greet everyone that came 
by or wanted to sniff around. In the beginning, I was very overwhelmed and 
didn't know how to handle this properly. So I asked you. And alot of you 
gave me some great advice. We did alot of practice and now had a very nice 
experience. :)

We had been in an unfamiliar area and I knew that there was a small café 
somewhere. When I found it, I was very hesitant to go in because I didn't 
know how Taylor would behave and how the staff there would react to an 
excited guide dog entering their shop. But when I opened the door, Taylor 
remained quiet and waited for a command. When I told him to find the 
counter, he did without any detours. After that, I told him to find a seat 
and he did that flawless, too. I told him to lie down and then had a cup of 
coffee. I was prepared to correct him in case he'd get up but that didn't 
happen. Sometimes, when the door opened, he looked up but put his head back 
to his paws again after a few seconds. We weren't far away from the counter 
where cake was sold but Taylor never tried to jump for a piece of it ;-) Of 
course I praised him for his good behaviour and all he did was wagging his 
tail against the chair. He stayed down and was just brilliant. :)
When we wanted to leave, he had a tiny moment of distraction because he had 
espied a trash can but when I strongly told him to go find the door, 
everything was fine again.

I was just so proud of him afterwards. And it was so good to see that the 
effort I put in training was all worth it.
And the training methods like putting a foot on the leash and tell him to 
stay down instead of correcting him when he was already standing or pulling, 
all came from here. So thank you very much for your input and shared 
experience!

Lisa