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 Hermi
one 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.
