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.