On 29 December, I received the latest in a long line of emails: “We have another service dog prospect.” This one was a 1yo doxie cross, spayed female. Even less promising than usual—dachshund’s aren’t exactly known for having a conformation that’s set up for service work.
But a look at her profile showed that the cross had been very beneficial. While she was obviously part dachshund, her back was not so long as to be dangerous later (some end up with elimination issues, or become paralyzed as they get older), and her legs were clearly well-shaped.
I gave the go-ahead for her to be tested, and Nancy made the appointment for 30 December. I didn’t get my hopes up. We’d been through this many, many times.
The next day I got a bit of a flurry of texts and emails. Sally may work out. Her sound alerts were almost scary, they looked like trained 2-way alerts, even though she only had ‘sit’ re-enforced. A few other things were shaky, but that was fairly normal: to get high sound reactivity, there’s going to some other reactivity somewhere. She’s very energetic. She barks. She wants to jump up on all the new friends she sees. Can we train her for public access? That’s the question. I picked her up that afternoon. It was a whirlwind!
Sally is very smart and eager to please. She came here with only ‘sit’ as a consistent command she knew. She’s now getting the hang of ‘down’, ‘leave it’, ‘wait’, retrieving, targeting, ‘off’, and settling on a mat. Engage with her and she’ll work hard! Nancy and I both enjoy training her, she’s food-, toy-, and praise-motivated. There’s nothing better than a dog who finds ear-scritches almost as rewarding as cheese!
We've only had time to do two private sessions (mostly focused on sound—Nancy watched a bit of me working basic training and agreed I had that pretty well down). Sally is signed up for a basic obedience class that starts on Tuesday, mostly for the socialization and to see if she can handle public access. It’s in a pet store, so there will be enough coming and going so that we’ll be able to get a read on her, while also being able to minimize terrible experiences, for the most part. (This is where having the same trainer for everything comes in handy!)
By the end of the month, I’ll know if this is foster-to-adopt, or foster and return, much better trained. This is one of the reasons training a service dog is difficult. I’m typing with Sally in my lap right now. She’s so very sweet! But if she can’t do what I need, she will make someone a very nice companion.