[nagdu] Guide Dog Obedience

[Tamara Smith-Kinney]

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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