Play time on Camera Continued!

Ok, I'm posting two more videos. The first one is a bit on the long side and I think the shorter second one is cuter. So I'm introducing Project Platypus and Rainy Day Pumpkin Play. Enjoy!

Play Time!

At the same time everyday Hermione gets very playful, so I've taken to video taping her. I then tweak them on my computer. Enjoy! All music by Bond.

Happy Haloween!

Hi! Happy Halloween! Hermione has been preparing for the big day by playing with her stuffed jack-o-lantern toy, and by learning to wear her witches hat. Sorry for the quality of picture, I blame a wobbly cell phone.
Hermione had a fun summer complete with a trip to the beach. We stayed in a friends near the beach house whilst there so we had a nice quiet spot for her to play in. She thought the waves on the ocean were terrifying and even slipped her collar. A friendly beach lounger caught her though. On that same trip I learned that Hermione's fear of anything with wheels could actually be a good thing at times. We went in a convenience store very early in the morning and the small confines of the store ment we had to squeeze in about a 5 foot space between an open doughnut display case on my right, and a large rolling cart stuffed with fresh doughnuts on Hermione's left. The guy who was stocking the doughnuts looked wary of Hermione. In stead of lunging for the hot doughnuts like any other living creature would have, she pressed into me to get away from the cart! She was so busy staring at the wheels that the existence of the doughnuts was completely lost on her. The doughnut stocker's eyes almost popped out of his head he was so startled by her disinterest. I should have scolded her for leaning on me since letting a scared dog lean on you is just confirming and praising their fear, but I was too busy laughing.
In addition to working on the fear of wheels, we've also been working on curving her urge to be extremely rude to the cat. She had the unkind habit of charging at Sabrina whenever she entered the same room. After much scolding, and a few angry hisses, she seems to be over that compulsion.
Hermione's weight and disinterest in eating is starting to alarm me a little. She always eats something, but never finishes her bowl. I ordered her first guide dog harness a few days ago and while I was resuming her I looked at the breed standards. She's well over the minimum height, she's about 22 inches at the shoulder. But at the same time she is under the minimum weight. She is only 32 pounds. I'm wondering whether slipping her a bit of cat food during the day wouldn't fatten her up a bit. She never took to the 2 meals a day plan and preferred to fast than to eat for the 15 minutes that her bowl was given to her for. So I let her eat when she naturally wants to, at night. She always liked nibbling at night so I gave in and she gets her bowl in her cage all night long so at least she eats something now.
I ran into a problem the other day when I went to get her the guide dog version of the dog license. I was told that they couldn't register her as a guide dog unless I had documentation stating she was from a school who trained her. I'm working on getting opinions as to whether this requirment violates the ADA or not. According to the ADA, and I produced a copy of the law that I showed them there, no one is allowed to ask for proof. They may only ask " Is this a service dog? " and "What does it do to assist you?". So I'm working on building a case to confront them.

I'm also really excited, and confused, as to what her color is doing. She's started her coat change and there are silvery colored hairs cropping up on her back, but there are also almost solid white ones on her tail! She has a few cream colored ear hairs on the underside of her ears too. I haven't a clue what she'll turn out to be, but it's really exciting to guess.

Anyway, we hope you have a happy Halloween everyone! Bye!

The Curse of Freedom

Well, I'm now a college grad and endeavoring on the, oh so difficult, job search. Now that I've got nothing to do, Hermione gets a lot more attention. Since being home she has really relaxed a lot. She is all out puppy here and has a new portable electric fence to help contain her romps.
Hermione's leash walking improved almost immediately after getting back to college for the last few weeks. She had to figure it out because it was her only means of using the bathroom. She does an excellent heel now which she very rarely breaks. I had noticed that when she did break a heel it was because she was too busy looking at something interesting off in the distance. I didn't want to scold her every time she got curious, so we came up with a new command. "Check" is what I say when I want Hermione to check her heel position and adjust. It was easy to teach since she automatically fixed her position anyway if I said anything. So I just put a word to her action.
In addition to an excellent heel, Hermione is starting to learn to stop at curbs an other large bumps in sidewalks. I figure, once it is a habit, I'll start putting a name to it. With that comes directions at curbs. I'm just starting to say "forward", "left", or "right" as I turn in those directions after a curb so she starts making the connection now.


Stairs were a big step for Hermione, but when we got to my dorm and she realized there was no way around it, so she caught on pretty quickly.

When we first got to school, the vast numbers of people terrified her. Actually, any unknown people terrified her. She would literally hide behind me, or press up against me to get away. Once she realized that everyone she met was really quite nice to her, she calmed down around people a lot. She isn't openly inviting like the Labrador was, but she doesn't try and run from people anymore. I think the one thing that really helped her was when she, unofficially, joined Wig and Buckle Theatre Company. Hermione was present for the last show of the semester, Spring Awakening. I had volunteered to work front of house for every night of the show. Hermione came along with me. It gave her a chance to meet people of all different sorts. Whenever we handed out playbills she would sit next to me just inside the theatre doors. In this possession she could see all the people as they came in, many of whom interacted with her. Here is a picture of her in the ticket booth at the theatre. Sorry about the cell phone picture quality.

Feeding Hermione has always been a difficult job since she never seems to want to eat. We've been shuffling around from food to food trying to find something she really enjoys. For a little while we even went the wet food route. She was interested for a few days in the wet food, but then stopped eating it. She really seemed to like a bag of human grade dog food we had never opened left over from the lab. The only problem was, not only was it expensive but no one in our area caries it. We tried another human grade food that she had no interest in whatsoever. Now she is on Wellness, though she isn't particularly enthusiastic about this food either. My cat had some stomach problems for about a week, and in that time we learned that both the cat and dog are in love with rotisserie chicken, and with Meow Mix Chicken with Beef and Gravy wet food. In fact recently, to get Hermione to take some medicine, we've been mixing powdered medicine into a little cat wet food. She loves it and can't seem to get enough. If only Meow Mix made a dog food.

When we got back home from school, Hermione was about 5-6 months old. She started to have some regression on house breaking. She had been sleeping in a roomy portable fence thing in my room. That was until she started waking me up with the smell of poop at 4 AM. She then got to go back to sleeping in a crate. She pooped in that at 4 AM too. It was strange, because even though we've gotten over that problem, I determined that she could have held if she had wanted. I started putting doggie diapers on her at night when she began this habit and every time she became a "paper-butt", as my mom calls it, she would not go to the bathroom. She would only go if she wasn't wearing a diaper. Now that she is seemingly over that problem, She has her larger fence area back, but she has her own bedroom now so I don't have to hear her rattling around in the middle of the night. However, during this phase we did have one very embarrassing incident. Hermione has been accompanying me to stores for some time now so she can get used to the different situations. When she was on the wet food, she was prone to a soft poop. Well, one day, while she was on the wet food, we went to the grocery store. And very shortly after entering the store, she started sending out diarrhea all down the bread isle. I was absolutely mortified. The small amount of bags I had were useless. And I had grabbed her hindquarters and was holding them over her head to stop anything else from coming out while tried to decide what to do. My mother was in the store at the Starbucks so I scooped Hermione up ad carried her over. My mother got the necessary cleaning supplies from the deli worker while I carried Hermione outside. She hasn't been back in a store for several weeks now. I'm waiting for her to go at least 2 months without an accident.

Now that we're home, I've been thinking about the possibility of doing dog training as a career. The difficulty is breaking into the career. There is a local non-profit organization called Fidos for Freedom who train assistance dogs. They focus on wheelchair patients and on hearing dogs. On Wednesdays they have a few classes open to the public so I've been taking Hermione to get her some dog on dog interaction time. When the dogs are let loose at the end of the session to play, Hermione never seems interested in joining in. In fact, she is quite terrified of the other dogs. She cowers when they come near her. Originally she would just hunch up in a corner and watch them, or hide behind me. She is starting to get a little interested though. She tries to sniff others now at least. It's weird because she will sniff other dogs, but will sit down if anyone else tries sniffing her hindquarters. As part of the Fidos classes, I also taught her to shake in only one 10-minute session.

I'm amazed at how quickly Hermione learns. When I called a pet supply store to hold the portable, wireless electronic fence, the guy on the end of the phone warned me that there was no way a dog could learn how to use the device within a 7 day span. It occurred to me that Hermione might be the exception. Sure enough, She was happily staying within the borders of the fence on the day we got it. She hasn't tested the boundaries since. Going along with this, since I’ve been home I've been trying to correct her problem of never letting anyone know when she has to go to the bathroom. I've trained her to ring a set of wind chimes that lives on the back door handle when she wants to go out She figured out how to ring it quickly, but the connection between the need to pee and the magic door opening bell is taking a while to sink in.

Hermione had a fun Forth of July. We took her with us to see some fireworks though we sat really really far away so the vibrations wouldn't scare her. I expected her to get all panicky, but she proved me wrong. She watched with confusion, but she was not scared. If anything it was the kids in front of us lighting sparklers that bothered her the most.

Learning Over Break

So it's Easter break and I'm home. I'm happy to say that Hermione is going to be allowed to go back to college with me on Monday. This is great as I only have classes two days a week and I'll have plenty of time to work with her.
In the two weeks since we got Hermione, while I've been at school, my mother taught her to sit. She does this consistently. Leash walking is still in progress. I walked with her yesterday. I held a treat down at my side, and every time she stayed at my side for several steps, I gave her the treat. One problem with her is that most dogs pull when they are on a leash. Hermione refuses to move. It rather reminds me of the time I tried taking one of my cats outside via a cat harness. We have the same problem trying to get her up and down stars. She really wants nothing to do with stairs and she's only ever managed to go down so far, and even then it's because she was stuck in the upstairs hall way all alone with everyone else downstairs. She's going to have to learn soon though because I don't fancy having to carry her up and down the stairs to get in and out of my dorm room.
We started the "stay" command today. She caught on really quickly. Only an unusually close encounter with the still unexplored cat caused her to break the command. The cat has been a point of fascination for Hermione. Sabrina, the cat, won't let Hermione too close because of some bad experiences with the lab. But in 2 weeks of having this dog around Sabrina has gotten closer to her than she ever did in the several months of having the lab around. She too evidently has realized how gentle this puppy is.
Hermione is also starting to learn how to go to the bathroom on command, however it takes a few minutes after stepping outside to get her to turn off play mode and focus on bathroom issues. She has the helpful habit of always going to the bathroom in the exact same place. That's nice to know because it gives me reason to believe that if she has her own habit, she will be less likely to break that habit and go in an inappropriate place as was my problem with the lab.
Hermione is also doing better in the play department than she was when she first got here. She was always in lying in her crate and the only toy she enjoyed was a cloth squeaky bone. She now has a couple of new favorites which she plays with constantly. The toy in the picture is a cloth fish with a hole in it's stomach and several squeaky eggs inside the stomach. The goal is to get the eggs out. It gives her something to work towards. She caught on immediately squeezing her nose in pulling out eggs. She also uses the eggs like balls. Her other favorite, and the one we use to coax her into going places she's uncertain of, is a quacking duck. The duck is in the second photo. This one appears to be the absolute favorite. It gets her outside at night when she is reluctant to move, and it also gets her toward the steps even if it's not enough to encourage to go up them.
Tonight, befor Hermione gets too tiered, we're going to try and tackle the stairs. My hope is that if I put something she wants on every step, she will be encouraged to move up eating as she goes. Then, if it's still nice and light, we'll try for a walk.

A Little Background First

Hello! I am a 23 year old with borderline legally blind low vision. I'm from Maryland but am currently finishing up college in Pennsylvania.
Last summer, 2008, I embarked on what I thought would be the amazing journey of getting a guide dog. I dreamed about a quite, well behaved, mild manured black Labrador. Ha! What I really got was the female version of Marley.
When I first met what was to become my first guide dog I was a little alarmed that her initial greeting to me was to leap up on me and take a great big bite at my arm. She left me a bruise that lasted the extent of my month long stay at the training school. At one point point I watched as the labs primary trainer played with her. He was actually encouraging her to snap at his hands. I didn't say anything, but even then I knew that that kind of playing only encourages the behavior. I foolishly bought their explanations that the biting was puppy mouthing and would go away. Eventually when I got the dog home I realized, with the aid of my vet, that the dog was too old to still be puppy mouthing and that it was worrying behavior in a 2 year old lab. I also learned that her dominating nature was exhausting to work with full time. Furthermore, I discovered that she had chronic, and uncontrollable, diarrhea. Eventually, her dominating personality, her destructive and painful chewing, and her uncontrollable bowels lead me to send her back to the school as was required by the contract we each had to singe. There is an image below of the Lab, Mimi, on Halloween, shortly before she returned to the guide dog school.
Before I completely leave the topic of the school there are a few things I would like to add. While at the guide dog school, there were many concerns brought up from those of us training about possible health problems with our dogs. Mine had the uncontrolled diarrhea which was dismissed as a non issue as was her biting. Another women getting a Labrador there, which I might add was also eventually returned to the school, was concerned about some discolored ooze that constantly dripped from her dogs eye. Yet another woman there who was getting a standard poodle guide was concerned about the dogs refusal to eat. Each of these concerns was brushed off as being unimportant. I know from my correspondence with these two women after our experience that all of our dogs had some sort of parasite. The other Labrador's handler discovered her dog had an eye infection, and the new poodle owner discovered the dog had Addisons disease, which immediately knocked the dog out of the guide dog business. After witnessing physical abuse toward the dogs in training by their trainers, including punching in the face, slamming the dogs jaws together until the dog starts crying, yanking dogs in the air for unkind periods of time while the dog was on a choker collar, as well as the neglect which was obvious due to their medical concerns, I decided I wanted to train my own guide dog since I felt I could no longer trust what a guide dog school could produce.
A positive side to my experience was that I learned a lot. While I was there, I roomed with the woman who was getting the poodle. I watched the two poodles she worked with while at the school with fascination They were very well behaved and were nothing like the aggressive dog I was trying to work with. The poodles were big and gentle and they never went crazy from over stimulation as my Lab did.
Remembering those poodles after I sent my Lab back, I decided I wanted to train my own Poodle guide dog.
I started doing research into training guide dogs. I had successfully trained the Labrador to "leave it", referring to food, "focus", to look at me, "drop it", any inappropriate object she'd grabbed, and to "take it" any edible substance on the floor. I started reading books and doing research into training your own service dogs.
After I gathered a good bit of information on training, preferred behaviors, and on puppy testing, I started looking for standard poodle breeders. There were lots to choose from. I made some calls did some more online research and found a small family run farm near my home in Maryland that breeds poodles. I went with the idea of selecting a young puppy figuring I would start training it once my last semester of college was over. When I went to see the puppies, I discovered that the puppy aptitude tests I'd brought were not very effective when evaluating the youngest puppies who were only a couple weeks old. It was very difficult to evaluate their personality's. Before we, meaning my mother and me, even evaluated the younger puppies though, the breeder brought in an older puppy who she though might fit the personality description I was looking for. As a 5 month old poodle, she was much easier to evaluate than were her younger half brothers and half sisters. She was sweet, quite, and loved attention while still not being timid. In short, she was the opposite of my Labrador dog and a year and a half her junior. While I looked at other puppies and tested them, this one puppy wouldn't leave my side even with the three other people, A cage of young chickens, and a dozen other dogs in the room. In the end, I selected her. The tricky thing was that I would be taking her home with me, a month earlier than I expected to have a dog.
I started to come up with names for my new puppy. She had just been groomed so her light brown fur was very "bushy" as J.K. Rowling describes Hermione's light brown hair in Harry Potter.The name fit perfectly with an intelligent dog breed with the right color and texture hair.
That was two weeks ago. I'm currently back at college trying to get permission to have her here with me so I can work more on socialization and on more commands.
Helpfully Hermione was already fully housebroken and crate trained when we got her. She loves her crate which is a giant canvas one that had belonged to the Lab. We had a smaller one that was more Hermione's size, but the Lab destroyed it the day before she was sent back to guide dog school.
As soon as I got her we, that is to say my mother and me, since I am off at school for one more month, started teaching Hermione to sit which she has mastered. "Come" is in progress. She learned fetch today in the effort to teach her to "give". We're working on nipping the barking in the bud before she really starts. Leash training is also in progress as is getting her slowly used to cars via short car rides as she has already gotten sick on rides.
Hermione is not very attracted to food so has thrown me for a bit of a loop when it comes to training her. She looses interest in the training treat, aka cream cheese which is so far her favorite, after two or three rewards. After the only eager for food Lab, I still half wonder what to use as a reward. One thing I have noticed however, is that she LOVES to be petted. She fell asleep in my lap the third day I was with her while I petted her for an hour. I have a feeling her favorite reward will be a great deal of energetic praise and some affection.
I'm happy to say that this puppy is not only nothing like the crazy Labrador I had, but is also an absolute sweetheart. Even my cat semi approves, or at least she's comfortable being in the same room as the poodle. The Lab chased the cat, Sabrina, a few times and acted aggressively towards her where as Hermione just did a few initial curious barks.
I am also thrilled at how gentle this dog seems to be. She doesn't bite at all, and she can actually play with soft toys! After the power house of a chewer I had before I was thrilled to find that something other than a Kong Extreme could survive as a toy. In the picture above she is sitting on a soft squeaky dog bone toy and has a soft puppy key ring shaped chew at her front paws. There is also a blue squeaky ball in their too. I'm excited for Hermione that she isn't a destructive chewer because many dogs can't be trusted around squeakers which can be pulled out and get swallowed whole. Hermione how ever does not chew to destroy she only chews gently to get the satisfaction of doing something.
As I continue to train Hermione, and try to get her on my college campus, I'll keep this blog updated. I'll also add more pictures when her training vest comes in the mail. I have some cute movie clips of Hermione being puppy like, but I need to wrestle with the formatting but I will figure out how to get them up.