Lighthouse Beams

Wow, our week is rolling by! Our wonderful trainer, Beth Levine, showed up at our place at noon yesterday and started working one on one with Suzy.  It was a different from the classes we attended for a couple of weeks.  Beth and Jenny pulled out of the SPCA due to the board members embezzling money from one of the accounts.  They are starting on their own while things are being taken care of through the legal system.

The class time we spent walking as a group and learning different things but it was a lot harder to work with them because of the other dogs around for distraction.

Yesterday when Beth arrived with Chaka, Suzy tried to show her disapproval for another dog being on her domain.  That is when she started learning the “leave” command.  Because of her breed this is going to be a hard thing for her to learn because they guard those they are in charge of.  But she got pretty good over the afternoon.

Suzy watching over Milton.

Suzy learned to sit and lay down.  These are called doggie pushups!  Wow, they work on making a person get exercise too.  Then we moved on to “wait”.  We put treats on the floor in front of her and she had to wait until we gave the ok for her to eat.  We also, made her wait at the door until we gave the ok for her to go outside.  We worked with her both inside and outside through out the afternoon.  “Off” was another word we worked on.  When she puts her paw on us of gets on something, it is “off” if you don’t want her to do it.  Then back to the “sit”, “lay down”, “stay”, and then added “stand”.  After Michael was home we went through everything again with him.  She also started working with her on “beep”.  “Beep” means when she is in the way and you want her to move.  This sounds odd to some, but this is an easy word for Milton to learn and do with her, too.  Then she worked with Suzy to start “pick up” things that were dropped.  We got that started but Suzy was pretty tired before long and started ignoring what we wanted.  So, we changed gears and took her out on the road and did the walking “heel”.  We are working on eventually getting her off her leash so she will walk right with us and NOT take off.

We were all pretty tired by the end of the day and sat around and goofed off for the evening.  Both Suzy and Chaka laid around and snoozed.

Now starts the “real” work of keeping Suzy going with all that she has learned yesterday.  I smell of hot dogs, cheese and chicken!!  These are a favorite treats that she found out that she liked yesterday and gets when we reward her.  Eventually it will become second nature and the rewards will end.  But for now I am wearing a doggie bag and smell of treats.

Off we take on this great schooling adventure.  Hmmm, and I thought I was just homeschooling my children and now the dog. 🙂

hsmom3

I'm the wife of my best friend that God gave to me over 20+ years ago. We have been blessed with 3 children, James (by adoption); Abigail & Milton (special needs child) and our service dog, Suzy. I have been blessed to be able to homeschool since 1997 and be the co-director with my husband, Michael, of the state wide Christian homeschool organization, MATCH since 1999. God has blessed us abundantly.