Jetta...the novel
So here it is, all the details on the Jetta adventures! Be warned it's looong, so go get your coffee now.
Jetta arrived on Sunday evening. Then just about half an hour later her half sister arrived. The sister is a baby puppy from this year’s litter and is being raised to be a guide dog by Meghan. Vrona and Kirby were also here, making for a total of 6 dogs in the house. That’s a lot of dogs!
We introduced all of the dogs and all went well. Belle, who I was a bit concerned about did really well. She wasn’t enthused about much romping and playing, but neither was she snarky with the other dogs.
Monday morning I worked Jetta in harness for the first time. I told her forward and off she went. She has a very nice pace and pull. She goes at a brisk pace, but it doesn’t make me feel like it’s a Jillian Michaels workout. Her pull is enough to feel her movements well, but not so much that it makes the muscles in my arm burn. Moving with her is very much like dancing. She’s fluid and graceful and very delicate. Her movements are easy to read. I do need a lot of practice so I can understand the exact meaning of what she is doing, but at least I can tell she’s indicating something to me. That’s a very solid start.
The first rout was a sort of clockwise square. It was very short, well short to me, and easy, again easy for my area. I’m thinking we went about 8 blocks or so. That was all right turns. Then we reversed it and did the left turns.
We had one minor issue with a street crossing. I hink she was trying to take me around some mud and debris in the gutter area of the street. So I got lined up, we stepped out and she was trying to move me around the goo, which moved us out of the correct alignment. We reworked it and all was well. She worked past a barking dog, did some really fancy maneuvering through some bad sidewalk, moved out very nicely with no hesitation. I am so pleased with her!
A bit later in the morning we went over to the park.We followed the baby puppy on the bouncy bridge. I had done this same ridge with Jetta when she was a baby puppy. She went right to the edge and stopped, I indicated forward and we continued on perfectly. It was so neat to see the similarities and differences between how she handled herself at that same spot a year apart. Basically the only difference was that she now stops and waits for me to tell her I’m ready. Last time I was the one waiting for her to be ready. Then we walked the sidewalk around the park. She likes to watch everything. There are a lot of squirrels at that park, but you’d never know it working with her. She completely ignores all of the wildlife.
In the afternoon we went shopping. We went to the farm supply store, then to Wal-Mart and then back to the farm supply store because Wal-Mart didn’t end up having a better deal on what we were looking for. She’s very nice in the store. I think she had one very minor clearance error towards the beginning of the shopping adventure and that was it. She weaved through clothing racks, up and down isles, past the meat cooler, and then she impressed me greatly when she was able to find outside from a good distance at Wal-Mart. I don’t think it was in her line of sight. That is something that I will appreciate a lot when we go to hotels and meetings in office buildings. It’s a more advanced skill and shows her extremely high level of problem solving ability.
She can get sniffy and there’s a lot to sniff in the farm store. I’m using a gentle leader with her and it helps a lot. After working with her for a few days, I think her sniffing is partly because she is so young. She’s curious and sniffing is a very natural way for dogs to learn about their environment. I also think she sniffs to relieve tension. I’m a new person. I’m asking her to do new things in a new environment. There are new dogs and a new home. It’s a lot and if she needs to sniff to relax, then I will make sure she gets the opportunity to sniff, where it’s appropriate. I think as she matures and settles in here, the sniffing will be drastically improved.
Monday night we worked on street crossings downtown. This was kind of difficult because of the very low volume of traffic. The crossings that were anything approaching normal she managed with no difficulty. The really freakishly weird corners with no curb, cut out, paint or anything to visually make it look like a corner, she had difficulty with. Every dog I’ve worked on those corners has trouble with them. I should probably interject here that this town is old and we have some…ummm…very, very strange curb approaches. There are corners with sidewalks that only go one direction, sidewalks that go both directions but don’t connect to the street, sidewalks with stairs to the curb, corners that are completely totally flat, sidewalks that are set back 15 feet from the street, sidewalks that stop and start randomly and every other manner of crazy. There isn’t a lot of consistency either. She is very good at getting what you want her to do when you rework something. We’ll jus have to keep practicing so she can get a lot of experience with every manner of odd street corner.
In between workouts the dogs ran around in the backyard, took naps and ate. Jetta is a super fast eater. She might even be faster than Monty. It doesn’t come back up though, so that’s good.
At home I’m working with her on keeping her down stay while I eat at the table. She’s getting loads better. She knows down and she has the capacity to stay. The problem is that I am new and she is sorting out if the old rules still apply in the new house. Yup, they do. She is a Doberman. She needs clear rules and consistent enforcement of the rules. It will help her to feel secure in her new place and to be pleasant to live with. I suppose all dogs need that, but Dobermans test perhaps more than other breeds. So she’s testing a bit. That’s okay. It reassures me that she’s smart and normal and has a mind of her own. I can appreciate that.
Tuesday first thing in the morning I took Jetta out alone. Yes, on day two, and you know what? She was incredible! She had a traffic check, or more accurately she dodged a kid on a bike on the sidewalk. She worked two of the weird corners perfectly on the first try. She had a very nice pace and pull. She listened to me, wasn’t distracted and was very nearly perfect, which is significantly better than any reasonable expectation for the second day.
Then we went in to Lincoln and worked big intersections with lots of traffic. Jetta likes to hug the left edge of the path, which will generally be okay. It’s just something for me to keep in the back of my mind because there will be times when I’ll need to direct her further over to the right. The downtown Lincoln street crossings were one of the places where Iwill need to watch her left tendency. She was stopping at the corners just fine, but because she likes the left and because the sidewalks are so extremely wide, we were ending up outside of the crosswalk area. It would have still been a safe crossing, but it would have made the curb approach on the other side harder than it needed to be. So we worked on getting her to stop in a better place. I think it took three corners before she got it. Then she got the next…quite a few…8 maybe? Spot on. Once she understands, she really understands. She wasn’t at all fussed about the heavy traffic, the semi trucks or the big city.
Then we did escalators and elevators and tried to work on stairs. She didn’t like the escalator much the first go, but by the third she was getting on and off very smoothly. I don’t use them much and I don’t know if I will with her, but I’m glad we worked on them so I know what to expect should there be a situation where I need to use an escalator. The elevator was a non event really. I will probably spend some time later on targeting the buttons, but I’m guessing she will pick it up without much because she will understand it’s a feature that is important and she’ll show it to me. She likes me to know about things, a lot of things. Sometimes I’m figuring out what she’s trying to communicate and sometimes I have no idea, but I praise her for the effort and hope that someday I will be able to sort it all out.
Then we tried to work on stairs, except that every single employee in the entire office building decided that right then was a good time to get in a bit of extra exercise in the stairwell or something. Seriously like one person used the escalators and I don’t think there was anyone on the elevator, but there must have been a dozen in the stairs and we were there a shorter amount of time. Jetta handles stairs fine. I was just hoping for a bit more practice in a different place. It’s okay, there are lots of stairs and it will be no problem to work on it later.
Then we ate lunch at Granite City, one of my most favorite places! Of course I tried to get Jetta situated like I am used to with Monty, except that Jetta isn’t Monty. Meghan suggested a very obvious placement, which worked like a charm. Jetta is considerably smaller than Monty. She can slide under my chair. Monty rarely fits like that. It didn’t occur to me to place Jetta like that because I am used to my much bigger Boo dog. Actually Jetta and Monty are very close to the same height. Monty is a much broader, rounder dog, while Jetta is very lean. Monty weighs in at probably close to 85 pounds, while Jetta is close to 50. Anyway, back to lunch…Jetta fell asleep with her head on my foot…until my son was telling a story that involved Jetta’s name with a nonsense word spoken like it was a command. Jetta popped her head up at the sound of her name, ready to go, if a bit confused from waking up so abruptly. She’s too funny! Assured that she was in fact not being asked to do anything, she put her head back on my foot and resumed her nap.
Tuesday evening we relaxed. The temperatures were in the high 80’s with very high humidity, making it miserable to be out much in the heat of the day. Everyone was very tired.
Wednesday morning we worked on sidewalkless and a ton of set up obstacles. Sidewalkless is something Jetta hasn’t had a lot of practice with. Still she did pretty well. I could tell she had an understanding of the concept. When the sidewalk ran out she immediately turned down the driveway to the street and stopped at the curb. I worked the actual sidewalkless part with lots of left turns back to the curb to reinforce that left edge. We encountered only a couple of parked cars. I think she’d prefer to work them from a distance, but I’m not confident about her leaving that left edge yet. We’ll have to figure that out. It’s tough this whole new dog thing. Sometimes she is doing something that I need to over ride and sometimes she is trying to do the right thing, but I’m not brave enough to follow. This is only the third day, so I’m not exactly sure what I’m expecting of myself and her. It takes time and I need to give that to her, to both of us.
She struggled with getting started on the set up obstacles. I think it was a lot to ask of her after a particularly mentally challenging route. My son had Monty out as one of the obstacles, which was kind of genius really. We encounter dogs all the time and she’ll need to work around them. However I think Monty was an unhappy camper seeing her in harness with me and he was giving her the death ray eyeballs. So that could be quite intimidating. Meghan worked with Jetta bit to get her over her hesitation to approach the set up obstacles. Monty went back in the house, probably easier on him and Jetta both. Once past where my son and Monty were sitting she worked the rest of the obstacles with little difficulty.
She’s young and she’s of course not perfect. She sniffs and she likes to stop and look at things she doesn’t understand. She gets confused at wonky street crossings. I am thrilled beyond words with her level of skill, her work ethic, her problem solving ability, her willingness to try something else when the first attempt wasn’t right, her willingness to work with me with Meghan following and her acceptance of me as her person. I thought we’d struggle with that, but we haven’t really. Right now she’s laying on my foot. Sunday night she would have rather been with Meghan. Monday she was going back and forth, probably going to Meghan more. By Tuesday evening she was coming to me for attention and choosing to lie next to me even with Meghan sitting only a couple of feet away. I’ve had rules about no petting or interacting with other dogs, but withJetta it hasn’t really crossed my mind. She isn’t a dog to go up to random people for attention. I don’t think two pats from guests is going to interfere with her wanting me as her person. Meghan would interact with Jetta while she was here, but it was calm and when Jetta initiated it. It seemed totally natural and fitting. I think if Meghan had completely ignored Jetta and given her the cold shoulder that it would have been hard on Jetta. This transition was about as smooth and stress free as it is possible to get.
So now Meghan is on her way back East. It would have been nice to have more time with her, but no amount of time would have been enough. I think even if she had stayed a month, I would still feel like we hadn’t covered everything and that would be right. It isn’t possible to practice every possible thing I might encounter with Jetta for the next 10 years.
Meghan did an amazing job with her. I have to remind myself frequently that Jetta is only 14 months old. In harness she acts like a much older dog. When she’s playing with toys though…she’s very much an enthusiastic puppy! If she’s this good at 14 months what will she be like as a seasoned guide?
And now it’s Wednesday evening. I just got back from taking Jetta on a very short jaunt in the neighborhood so my husband could see how well she does. We went about 6 blocks because we were dripping with sweat and Jetta was panting hard. It’s miserably hot out there.
She’s so incredible! She stops at the sidewalk intersections. Here, most of the sidewalks are set back from the street a good bit. If you work all the way to the curb, you end up doubling back to make the turn to the perpendicular sidewalk. Jetta stops so I can turn without having to do the doubleback part. Pretty impressibe for such a young thing! I think if it’s a familiar area I’ll take her up on this bonus feature, but if we are in an area I don’t know well I’ll nee to work all the way to the curb so I’m sure of whats what.
She worked another wonky curb approach most excellent! First there were branches just as we approached the curb, she stopped separately for the branches and the curb. Then in order to turn at that corner we had to turn from the curb because there is no sidewalk. So it’s a sidewalk to a sidewalkless turn. She worked beautifully to the other side of the street and put her front feet up on the curb! What a good girl. Then we worked around the corner in the street until we found the sidewalk so we could resume. I’m not explaining well, but she did exactly what she should on the very first go. Then on the approach to the connecting sidewalk, which was a 90 degree turn to the right, she did this amazingly agile maneuver where she sort of pivoted neatly so I would be lined up to step up head on. I would expected to have ended up stepping up at an angle because of the way we approached it, but she is so very careful about making sure I have good footing. That is such an awesome feeling. It doesn’t take much for me to step wrong and wobble or cause my foot to give one of these flashes of pain and refusal to support my weight. It so nice to know that she’s very aware of the terrain. I don’t need to worry, she’s got it.
And now for some lounging in front of the TV because we all deserve a little slothfulness!
Jetta arrived on Sunday evening. Then just about half an hour later her half sister arrived. The sister is a baby puppy from this year’s litter and is being raised to be a guide dog by Meghan. Vrona and Kirby were also here, making for a total of 6 dogs in the house. That’s a lot of dogs!
We introduced all of the dogs and all went well. Belle, who I was a bit concerned about did really well. She wasn’t enthused about much romping and playing, but neither was she snarky with the other dogs.
Monday morning I worked Jetta in harness for the first time. I told her forward and off she went. She has a very nice pace and pull. She goes at a brisk pace, but it doesn’t make me feel like it’s a Jillian Michaels workout. Her pull is enough to feel her movements well, but not so much that it makes the muscles in my arm burn. Moving with her is very much like dancing. She’s fluid and graceful and very delicate. Her movements are easy to read. I do need a lot of practice so I can understand the exact meaning of what she is doing, but at least I can tell she’s indicating something to me. That’s a very solid start.
The first rout was a sort of clockwise square. It was very short, well short to me, and easy, again easy for my area. I’m thinking we went about 8 blocks or so. That was all right turns. Then we reversed it and did the left turns.
We had one minor issue with a street crossing. I hink she was trying to take me around some mud and debris in the gutter area of the street. So I got lined up, we stepped out and she was trying to move me around the goo, which moved us out of the correct alignment. We reworked it and all was well. She worked past a barking dog, did some really fancy maneuvering through some bad sidewalk, moved out very nicely with no hesitation. I am so pleased with her!
A bit later in the morning we went over to the park.We followed the baby puppy on the bouncy bridge. I had done this same ridge with Jetta when she was a baby puppy. She went right to the edge and stopped, I indicated forward and we continued on perfectly. It was so neat to see the similarities and differences between how she handled herself at that same spot a year apart. Basically the only difference was that she now stops and waits for me to tell her I’m ready. Last time I was the one waiting for her to be ready. Then we walked the sidewalk around the park. She likes to watch everything. There are a lot of squirrels at that park, but you’d never know it working with her. She completely ignores all of the wildlife.
In the afternoon we went shopping. We went to the farm supply store, then to Wal-Mart and then back to the farm supply store because Wal-Mart didn’t end up having a better deal on what we were looking for. She’s very nice in the store. I think she had one very minor clearance error towards the beginning of the shopping adventure and that was it. She weaved through clothing racks, up and down isles, past the meat cooler, and then she impressed me greatly when she was able to find outside from a good distance at Wal-Mart. I don’t think it was in her line of sight. That is something that I will appreciate a lot when we go to hotels and meetings in office buildings. It’s a more advanced skill and shows her extremely high level of problem solving ability.
She can get sniffy and there’s a lot to sniff in the farm store. I’m using a gentle leader with her and it helps a lot. After working with her for a few days, I think her sniffing is partly because she is so young. She’s curious and sniffing is a very natural way for dogs to learn about their environment. I also think she sniffs to relieve tension. I’m a new person. I’m asking her to do new things in a new environment. There are new dogs and a new home. It’s a lot and if she needs to sniff to relax, then I will make sure she gets the opportunity to sniff, where it’s appropriate. I think as she matures and settles in here, the sniffing will be drastically improved.
Monday night we worked on street crossings downtown. This was kind of difficult because of the very low volume of traffic. The crossings that were anything approaching normal she managed with no difficulty. The really freakishly weird corners with no curb, cut out, paint or anything to visually make it look like a corner, she had difficulty with. Every dog I’ve worked on those corners has trouble with them. I should probably interject here that this town is old and we have some…ummm…very, very strange curb approaches. There are corners with sidewalks that only go one direction, sidewalks that go both directions but don’t connect to the street, sidewalks with stairs to the curb, corners that are completely totally flat, sidewalks that are set back 15 feet from the street, sidewalks that stop and start randomly and every other manner of crazy. There isn’t a lot of consistency either. She is very good at getting what you want her to do when you rework something. We’ll jus have to keep practicing so she can get a lot of experience with every manner of odd street corner.
In between workouts the dogs ran around in the backyard, took naps and ate. Jetta is a super fast eater. She might even be faster than Monty. It doesn’t come back up though, so that’s good.
At home I’m working with her on keeping her down stay while I eat at the table. She’s getting loads better. She knows down and she has the capacity to stay. The problem is that I am new and she is sorting out if the old rules still apply in the new house. Yup, they do. She is a Doberman. She needs clear rules and consistent enforcement of the rules. It will help her to feel secure in her new place and to be pleasant to live with. I suppose all dogs need that, but Dobermans test perhaps more than other breeds. So she’s testing a bit. That’s okay. It reassures me that she’s smart and normal and has a mind of her own. I can appreciate that.
Tuesday first thing in the morning I took Jetta out alone. Yes, on day two, and you know what? She was incredible! She had a traffic check, or more accurately she dodged a kid on a bike on the sidewalk. She worked two of the weird corners perfectly on the first try. She had a very nice pace and pull. She listened to me, wasn’t distracted and was very nearly perfect, which is significantly better than any reasonable expectation for the second day.
Then we went in to Lincoln and worked big intersections with lots of traffic. Jetta likes to hug the left edge of the path, which will generally be okay. It’s just something for me to keep in the back of my mind because there will be times when I’ll need to direct her further over to the right. The downtown Lincoln street crossings were one of the places where Iwill need to watch her left tendency. She was stopping at the corners just fine, but because she likes the left and because the sidewalks are so extremely wide, we were ending up outside of the crosswalk area. It would have still been a safe crossing, but it would have made the curb approach on the other side harder than it needed to be. So we worked on getting her to stop in a better place. I think it took three corners before she got it. Then she got the next…quite a few…8 maybe? Spot on. Once she understands, she really understands. She wasn’t at all fussed about the heavy traffic, the semi trucks or the big city.
Then we did escalators and elevators and tried to work on stairs. She didn’t like the escalator much the first go, but by the third she was getting on and off very smoothly. I don’t use them much and I don’t know if I will with her, but I’m glad we worked on them so I know what to expect should there be a situation where I need to use an escalator. The elevator was a non event really. I will probably spend some time later on targeting the buttons, but I’m guessing she will pick it up without much because she will understand it’s a feature that is important and she’ll show it to me. She likes me to know about things, a lot of things. Sometimes I’m figuring out what she’s trying to communicate and sometimes I have no idea, but I praise her for the effort and hope that someday I will be able to sort it all out.
Then we tried to work on stairs, except that every single employee in the entire office building decided that right then was a good time to get in a bit of extra exercise in the stairwell or something. Seriously like one person used the escalators and I don’t think there was anyone on the elevator, but there must have been a dozen in the stairs and we were there a shorter amount of time. Jetta handles stairs fine. I was just hoping for a bit more practice in a different place. It’s okay, there are lots of stairs and it will be no problem to work on it later.
Then we ate lunch at Granite City, one of my most favorite places! Of course I tried to get Jetta situated like I am used to with Monty, except that Jetta isn’t Monty. Meghan suggested a very obvious placement, which worked like a charm. Jetta is considerably smaller than Monty. She can slide under my chair. Monty rarely fits like that. It didn’t occur to me to place Jetta like that because I am used to my much bigger Boo dog. Actually Jetta and Monty are very close to the same height. Monty is a much broader, rounder dog, while Jetta is very lean. Monty weighs in at probably close to 85 pounds, while Jetta is close to 50. Anyway, back to lunch…Jetta fell asleep with her head on my foot…until my son was telling a story that involved Jetta’s name with a nonsense word spoken like it was a command. Jetta popped her head up at the sound of her name, ready to go, if a bit confused from waking up so abruptly. She’s too funny! Assured that she was in fact not being asked to do anything, she put her head back on my foot and resumed her nap.
Tuesday evening we relaxed. The temperatures were in the high 80’s with very high humidity, making it miserable to be out much in the heat of the day. Everyone was very tired.
Wednesday morning we worked on sidewalkless and a ton of set up obstacles. Sidewalkless is something Jetta hasn’t had a lot of practice with. Still she did pretty well. I could tell she had an understanding of the concept. When the sidewalk ran out she immediately turned down the driveway to the street and stopped at the curb. I worked the actual sidewalkless part with lots of left turns back to the curb to reinforce that left edge. We encountered only a couple of parked cars. I think she’d prefer to work them from a distance, but I’m not confident about her leaving that left edge yet. We’ll have to figure that out. It’s tough this whole new dog thing. Sometimes she is doing something that I need to over ride and sometimes she is trying to do the right thing, but I’m not brave enough to follow. This is only the third day, so I’m not exactly sure what I’m expecting of myself and her. It takes time and I need to give that to her, to both of us.
She struggled with getting started on the set up obstacles. I think it was a lot to ask of her after a particularly mentally challenging route. My son had Monty out as one of the obstacles, which was kind of genius really. We encounter dogs all the time and she’ll need to work around them. However I think Monty was an unhappy camper seeing her in harness with me and he was giving her the death ray eyeballs. So that could be quite intimidating. Meghan worked with Jetta bit to get her over her hesitation to approach the set up obstacles. Monty went back in the house, probably easier on him and Jetta both. Once past where my son and Monty were sitting she worked the rest of the obstacles with little difficulty.
She’s young and she’s of course not perfect. She sniffs and she likes to stop and look at things she doesn’t understand. She gets confused at wonky street crossings. I am thrilled beyond words with her level of skill, her work ethic, her problem solving ability, her willingness to try something else when the first attempt wasn’t right, her willingness to work with me with Meghan following and her acceptance of me as her person. I thought we’d struggle with that, but we haven’t really. Right now she’s laying on my foot. Sunday night she would have rather been with Meghan. Monday she was going back and forth, probably going to Meghan more. By Tuesday evening she was coming to me for attention and choosing to lie next to me even with Meghan sitting only a couple of feet away. I’ve had rules about no petting or interacting with other dogs, but withJetta it hasn’t really crossed my mind. She isn’t a dog to go up to random people for attention. I don’t think two pats from guests is going to interfere with her wanting me as her person. Meghan would interact with Jetta while she was here, but it was calm and when Jetta initiated it. It seemed totally natural and fitting. I think if Meghan had completely ignored Jetta and given her the cold shoulder that it would have been hard on Jetta. This transition was about as smooth and stress free as it is possible to get.
So now Meghan is on her way back East. It would have been nice to have more time with her, but no amount of time would have been enough. I think even if she had stayed a month, I would still feel like we hadn’t covered everything and that would be right. It isn’t possible to practice every possible thing I might encounter with Jetta for the next 10 years.
Meghan did an amazing job with her. I have to remind myself frequently that Jetta is only 14 months old. In harness she acts like a much older dog. When she’s playing with toys though…she’s very much an enthusiastic puppy! If she’s this good at 14 months what will she be like as a seasoned guide?
And now it’s Wednesday evening. I just got back from taking Jetta on a very short jaunt in the neighborhood so my husband could see how well she does. We went about 6 blocks because we were dripping with sweat and Jetta was panting hard. It’s miserably hot out there.
She’s so incredible! She stops at the sidewalk intersections. Here, most of the sidewalks are set back from the street a good bit. If you work all the way to the curb, you end up doubling back to make the turn to the perpendicular sidewalk. Jetta stops so I can turn without having to do the doubleback part. Pretty impressibe for such a young thing! I think if it’s a familiar area I’ll take her up on this bonus feature, but if we are in an area I don’t know well I’ll nee to work all the way to the curb so I’m sure of whats what.
She worked another wonky curb approach most excellent! First there were branches just as we approached the curb, she stopped separately for the branches and the curb. Then in order to turn at that corner we had to turn from the curb because there is no sidewalk. So it’s a sidewalk to a sidewalkless turn. She worked beautifully to the other side of the street and put her front feet up on the curb! What a good girl. Then we worked around the corner in the street until we found the sidewalk so we could resume. I’m not explaining well, but she did exactly what she should on the very first go. Then on the approach to the connecting sidewalk, which was a 90 degree turn to the right, she did this amazingly agile maneuver where she sort of pivoted neatly so I would be lined up to step up head on. I would expected to have ended up stepping up at an angle because of the way we approached it, but she is so very careful about making sure I have good footing. That is such an awesome feeling. It doesn’t take much for me to step wrong and wobble or cause my foot to give one of these flashes of pain and refusal to support my weight. It so nice to know that she’s very aware of the terrain. I don’t need to worry, she’s got it.
And now for some lounging in front of the TV because we all deserve a little slothfulness!