San Francisco Plus a Night Route

Trishna and I are TIRED. We had a very long day.

Our first workout of the day was in San Francisco, Fisherman's Warf to be specific. We had lots of practice weaving in and out people, stopping, turning, and generally trying to get out of the way of a bunch of sighted people who weren't paying attention to where they were. Hey, all you sighted people, why is it that when you get in large groups, you mill about aimlessly and wander and don't watch where you're going? I don't understand. Use those peepers if you have 'em. :-) Trishna did very well. Let me tell you, this dog can stop on a dime. And I can almost stop on a quarter. So we're getting there. Then we had to do obedience down at Fisherman's Warf (doggy pushups, etc.), and several instructors pretended to be very enthusiastic dog lovers who tried to pet and call our dogs while we working.

Then, it was back to campus. In the early part of the afternoon, we had individual meetings with our instructors to talk about final goals that we wanted to meet before we leave. I can't believe that we're already on final goals. One of my goals was to do a little bit more complex clicker training with Trishna, so after our meeting, we went out and did that. I trained her on targeting a pole where audible signals are usually located. I wanted to try one on a busy street with lots of distractions, because that's my campus environment. It's one thing to clicker train in a quiet room; it's another to do it on a busy street. She did very well.

Finally, we had our first night workout. For those of you who don't know, dogs behave slightly differently at night. Like humans, they don't see as well at night either. Although they see better than we do, and certainly better than I do. Thank goodness! They're more cautious, and sometimes can get startled by shadows or critters. Trishna and I did not have a single problem for most of the route. We were absolutely perfect until ten feet from where we needed to be, where she encountered another dog, and I had to give her a pretty firm correction. Oh, Trishna.

Today is the first day that I'm seriously wanting to go home. I think we're ready. Our instructors said we're ready. We really just have to finish out the next few days strong and learn as much as we can, so that we can take all we've learned home to do a great job. Trishna's already snoring, so I'm off to do the same.