During our morning training, we worked on a lot of obedience training. Aubrey also go her Mutt Mat and this is used for the "place"command. We worked on "place" quite a bit. Her Mutt Mat is a 30x36 mat which is a "place" that Aubrey should go and stay until you tell her otherwise. It's by no means punative but rather an area that's just for her. She can do whatever she wants to do while in "place" as long as two paws are always on her mat. At home, "place" could be used for really anything...while you're cooking dinner, if you don't want your dog running around while you have company, while you're cleaning, etc. It's literally just a "place" but one that the dog cannot leave from unless you tell them to. It's a good idea to leave some fun stuff like a bone or chew toy on the Mutt Mat for your dog to further reinforce the fact that there's no negative connotation to being in "place". At school, "place" is an extrememly important component for success. This gives the child's dog the boundaries it needs within the classroom. Whether it's next to the child's desk, during morning Circle, in the cafeteria or whever else the child may be, this is the dog's "place", and this is where he/she should remain at all times unless told otherwise. While having a service dog in school provides the child with an extraordinary amount of assistance and support, it could be a huge distraction, and disaster, if it were to wonder all over the classroom throughout the day.
Later in the morning Allison and I went tracking. It was cloudy, really wet and cold as it had snowed earlier in the morning. Since I'm starting to get really sleepy and it's already 355am, I'll still give you the most important details of the track since it's worth noting! :) Aubrey nailed the scent very quickly. She took off and about 3/4 of the way into the track, the terrain changed in a major way and I wiped out BIG TIME. Yeah, I'm talking...BIG TIME!!!!!! Aubrey unexpectedly snapped really hard to the left, probably because the wind slightly changed the scent cone in that area, and I lost my footing. The fall knocked the wind out of me for a second, but I bounced up like a tennis ball and kept going but at a much slower pace. Lesson learned. When I saw the terrain change ahead of me, I should've definitely slowed Aubrey down. Instictively, I was going to try to break my fall, but in a milisecond I realized that if I tried I could get injured. At that moment my body was so out of my control; I honestly wasn't even sure what way I was going to fall and figured it would be safer just to go with it. Ouch! I held onto to Aubrey's lead for dear life as I was falling, and by some grace of God, I never lost hold of it as I tumbled over myself! It was nuts! At that point, I absolutely HAD to slow Aubrey down so I could walk quickly as opposed to run. I quite literally could not run anymore. If I could've just laid in the wet grass for a couple of minutes I would've. It was unbelievably hard running in wet, muddy, high grass (hello...I'm only five feet tall!) in 30 degree weather being pulled by a dog on a mission.
I do believe what made the last 1/4 of the track so difficult is that I never had time to recover from the fall. Not to mention, I started having some serious anxiety once I fell. Now I was breathing so much harder, my heart was pounding and I started thinking, "Oh my God, what if I'm one of those people who just collapses while I'm running??!!" "Oh my God, what if there's something wrong with my heart or have a serious asthma attack and stop breathing??" What if's are the brutal nature of anxiety rearing it's ugly head. Being really tired and, quite frankly, feeling so much apprehension at that point was an absolute guarantee for anxiety. I was coughing a lot and didn't have my inhaler. In retrospect, I should've used an inhaler before the track. The reality of it though, is that in an emergency, I'd have no time to "use as directed 15 to 30 minutes prior to excersise". I wasn't too worried about getting my Rx refilled before we left because I had Zachary's Albuterol and knew I could use that if I needed to. Well, since he was NOT with me neither was the inhaler. Ugh!Another lesson learned. I should also mention that the run wasn't nearly as hard two days ago, but the weather conditions were completely different. Wow, there's a lot to consider, huh?? I was one of four people who wiped out today. It happens. I just wish it didn't happen to me!! ;)
After lunch, we worked on some commands for behavior disruption such as "lap" and "over". We also learned some tricks such as "shake", "give five" and "high five". Zachary and Allison got the biggest kick out of Aubrey's tricks. We'll work on more of these commands and more tomorrow.
It's now 445am. Good night again!
(no doubt a ton of typpos with this entry.)
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