Saturday Errands

Boston and I had a busy day yesterday. We made a sausage run to Thielen Meats in Little Falls. We have them make all our vension sausage. They do an excellent job and it's worth the two-hour drive.

While we were in Little Falls we visted my mother, Boston's grandmother. Boston had good dog manners at my mom's apartment in the assisted living building. Mom and I had a family friend over for lunch and Boston played nicely while we prepared lunch, and she laid quietly at my feet while we ate. I learned with the first dog I trained that I worked so hard to make her service dog skills great, but when she was a "regular" dog her manners weren't always up to par. So is something I work hard on with subsequent dogs.

After lunch we took grandma shopping to the drug store. Boston still didn't want to go on the elevator. She was fine with this as a younger pup, but now this has changed. (That's normal, and part of our training process is to continually re-introduce new and familiar situations). Decided we'd have to work on this another time, and took the steps to meet them downstairs. It's hard to focus on the dog when you're herding two little-old-ladies toward the exit. Any of you who have elderly parents know what I'm talking about.

As grandma walked s-l-o-w-l-y through the store (she's 91 years old) we worked on Loose Leash Walking (LLW). Now, I have to tell you one of the things we work on with LLW is to sit or drop when we pause. Poor Boston, we were walking so slow she thought she needed to sit at each step! It was good for her as I don't normally walk that slow when training. Boston also met a little tiny baby (finally!) and they both got a kick out of each other. It was a successful visit.

While getting in and out of the car I noticed Boston's pack was looking a little small on her. She's growing!

We retired that pack and now she is in her big-girl pack. Ah, much better.

We had dinner on the patio last night to enjoy the beautiful late-summer day. My fork was accidentally knocked off the table and rather than picking it up myself I had Boston do it. She got to task right away, and wasn't even distracted with the fact that there was probably food still on it. Excellent! After dinner we relaxed by enjoying the rest of the evening outside.