July 15th, 2023
On this day, even though it was Saturday, I still got up at 6 AM and got myself ready. At 7am I took Eve out, fed her and gave her water. Once this was done, we headed up to breakfast. After breakfast, we completed an obedience session similar to what we have been doing throughout the week. Once our obedience session ended, we were instructed to go back to our rooms to grab our stuff in order to go on a short route for the day.
This short route was very different from the routes we have done in the past because this was the first time that we were actually in a public space. On this day, we were stationed in a Starbucks and told to keep our dogs under control. I lucked out in that I actually went first on my route, so when I got back, Eve was very tired. The only challenge we had on this route that neither of us had ever navigated through was duck poop. The instructor that I was working with had to guide me through the duck poop because there was a lot of it.
After we finished our route, Eve and I sat in the Starbucks with our classmates, waiting for the others to finish. Once everyone had finished, we loaded back up into the vans in order to head back to campus for lunch.
Once lunch was completed, we had a group play session. This group play session went extremely well and was extremely beneficial for our next activities.
Shortly after the group play session ended, we had a lecture on using booties for extreme temperatures. This is one lecture that I struggled with because not having two working hands made it very difficult to put the booties on for the first time. The instructors were more than willing to assist in trying to find ways for this to work. Once I got all the booties on, it was very different to walk with her in them than out of them. It was almost like she was galloping like a horse.
In addition to learning how to use the booties, we also learned how to brush our dogs as this is an important bonding process for us as handlers. It’s also important to brush our dogs in order to make them look their best as they are in public constantly.
During the lecture on booties and brushing, we were also introduced to the clicker. If you know anything about dog psychology and Pavlov, the clicker is used in a very similar way. Anytime a dog hears a click we were instructed to feed them. Some examples of when we would use the clicker would be to identify chairs, buttons, and other commonly used objects or places.
After this lecture concluded, we were given free time to complete any tasks we needed before 4 PM when we had to give our dogs food, water, and a bathroom break.
From about 4 to 6 PM we had more downtime before dinner. After dinner, I took Eve out again and gave her water. At about 9 PM. I took her out one more time before going to bed.
