4 Paws For Alex

Good Evening from Ohio,

    Well let's start out by saying we slept later than usual this morning, could be because we are tired or because we stayed up late updating the site.  After breakfast we headed to 4 Paws.  It was very cold this morning, there was frost here ~35 deg F with a biting wind.  Needless to say we didn't let the kids go out and play in the morning, after all we didn't bring winter jackets.

    When we got there we did the usual and let Honor run in the fenced area, however this morning was a little different.  After Ziti (Alec's Golden Doddle) and Journey (Judi's Golden Doodle) got to the fenced in area the white monsters began to play, more like rough house.  Doesn't Mom always say that when there is rough play someone always gets hurt.

    They were running along happily playing then all of a sudden there was a 2 against one Doodle collison with Honor being in the middle.  He didn't stay on his feet and after the hard roll he took, he came up limping, not wanting to put any weight on his leg.  He still wanted to go but was too limited in his movement on three legs.  Alec's Dad (Bob) went into the facility to see what we should do, carry him in or let him walk it off.  Well it wasn't long before he was putting a little weight on it. still limping though.  That was it for Honor and the play area, he began walking a little better so we headed inside.

    Inside we met one of the staff who said that he probably has a slight sprain but will be OK, indicating Dogs have a high threshold for pain.  He clearly wasn't whimpering at all. 

    When Jeremy came in we told him what happened and he said that one of the vets would check him out tomorrow since he did observe a slight weight avoidance with that leg.  After going around the room, going over any issues people had the previous day/night.

    When it was our turn, Deanna said that at 3 AM, Alex had a seizure but Honor didn't want to be bothered getting up from sleeping, though he did wake up though no barking.  Jeremy said that the dog has to be motivated to do his work, which means we need to have the treats ready and be prepared to bring him to Alex so he can get closer to the seizure scent.  Jeremy also said that seizure dogs usually will only alert on the first seizure since after one, the seizure scent is in the air and they are NOT trained to bark all while they smell that scent.

    When we asked if we should have bagged Alex's shirt since it was fresh, he said yes (oops, we didn't know that at the time).  This prompted a couple more questions: 1) Do we still need to have fresh T-shirts new out of the bag, the answer to that is NO, the only reason they say that is to be able to discriminate between the seizure scent instead of the different detergents.  2)  Do we need to change his bed linens and ours if he has one in our bed, the answer to that was Yes, we are not looking forward to changing linens that often, but if it will help Honor with the alerting, then it is a sacrifice we will have to make.

    We continued in the morning session on obedience commands then broke for lunch with another trip to the mall planned for the afternoon.  You could hear everone in the room groan (not again), but this is the trainers only way of observing us away from the training facility and in real life situations.

    We got in the car and asked the kids if they wanted to go to the mall again.  What do you think their answer was?  A resounding "NO".  So Deanna and the kids dropped me off at the mall, while they went to get lunch at Mcdonalds or something.  She said it would do me good to have to interact with other people (usually she does all the talking when people come up and ask question about the dog)  While at the mall, I had Subway (eat fresh) as Alex says.  During lunch Honor was sitting under the table as we had been taught, this prompted another question, when they are doing a command well, we have been trained to reward them.  So my question was should they be rewarded during a meal (with their own treats of course, since they can have absolutely no table food ever) if they are doing a good job staying put.  Jeremy's answer was "I wouldn't", you are teaching them to expect treats during meals which is not a behavior that we should start.

    One of the things we were having difficulty with was Honor going up/down stairs too quickly, Jeremy had the answer again and made it look so easy, force Honor to stop on every step and sit so he becomes conditioned to go slow.  Sounds pretty obvious, but when we are the ones doing it the only thing we thought of was holding back on the leash.  After Jeremy showed me the technique and infromed us of another command "forward" then "stand" for each few steps to use him as a balance guide going up/down stairs the stairs were much easier to navigate.

    Once this was done, I was free to go for the day to go back to the hotel to practice other basic commands.  When I got back the I took the kids to the pool again ( no news here, this is what we do every day).  When we got back to room from the pool, we went to the breakfast area for a BBQ that the Hotel does every Tuesday.  After that, we went back to the hotel room to carve pumpkins, you see the Hotel is having a Halloween party tomorrow and one of the events was pumpkin carving, we people carve pumpkins and then the hotel staff judge the best pumpkin.  We will take pictures tomorrow and post them

    No new pictures or videos were added today, but we will add them tomorrow.

abeeda abeeda abeeda, That's all folks.

Alex's Dad.