Many people here have urged me to keep Sally, regardless of her fitness for service work of any type. You can see it in the comments here and here. I’ve stressed about it a lot. I don’t want to disappoint the community. Sally isn’t in any way suitable for public access, and as time has gone on, she has shown that more and more. We’re currently in a private course for her, using Premack’s principle as a way to try to get her to the point where being within 12 feet of another dog doesn’t trigger her to bark and lunge. I’m not saying Sally is aggressive! She wants to play. She’s in many ways a puppy. But this is her personality, and sometimes the basics can only be managed.
Her personality is also eager to please and learn. She picks things up so quickly it’s almost scary, and she generalizes fast. Her hearing alert is amazing, and is only getting better. (I’m glad the trainer working on the behavioral side has never seen it in action. She’s not swayed by it.)
Last week Sally went behind my rocking chair and pushed her nose right up to my carbon monoxide detector, trotted up to me, shoved me with her nose, and turned and did a Dachshund point (nose and tail lined up in a straight line) straight at the thing. I thanked her, but thought little of it. About a minute later, the same thing happened. A minute after that, again, and I was on the phone to maintenance! It turned out all the CO monitors were defective, and they were replacing them as they died. I told them when she did it again, and they declared it ‘impressive’—the monitors beeped once a minute, they had heard it, and she had gone to it when it had gone off. She got a lot of treats. I got a new monitor in the morning. (No, she hasn’t been trained to do that. How would we?)
I could pull out numerous more examples of how well she does, but going by previous comments, I don’t think you need to be convinced. I think you’d be mad if I sent her on.
So she’s staying. As a purely in-house hearing alert dog, to catch the things that can’t be trained. The CO monitor saved her (and all of us, potentially), she was about to be sent back, despite her obvious ability.
She’ll also keep Pùka company. He’s been lonely when we’ve gone out training, and he’s made that obvious. So it will work on a few levels.
But I still need a public access dog. That was the entire point. I’m not safe out in public not knowing what’s going on around me. Both trainers, as we’ve been working with Sally, have been fielding the suggestion of getting another dog, a large breed to do brace and hearing alert, and keeping Sally home to continue doing what she does best.
Nancy won’t be able to start looking quite yet, she just had surgery for cancer (it looks like they got it all, and she’s doing great!), but it look like the search may be on. I’m nervous. It will be expensive. The training won’t be an issue—I sent over more than enough to take care of that, so that no one could accuse me of peculating. And I’m hoping that Helping Paws will help with the vet visit, since Sally is still holding onto that UTI she’s had since before I got her (and I haven’t formally adopted her yet, I want to wait until this UTI clears up).
I’m really pretty nervous. If I’d thought this was how things would go, I would had done things differently. I wouldn’t have put so much into trying to get Sally acclimated to people, done all that extra running around, stressing her, the car, and me out. I wouldn’t have needed I good bit of the gear I got. I worry about how to get two seat belts, and about the new management here, regardless of the law, and large breed service gear, and it’s all stress.
But then I think about how much fun Sally will have with a dog that knows how to play, and being able to go out and not only knowing about my surroundings again, but having less fear about what to do if I fall, and that’s nice. And I have always loved the larger breeds. ♥
And I don’t have to worry about the committariat being mad at me for Sally going to a new home. ;)