Dogimus Prime

I have to admit, I have been keeping a secret. We have been planning and training for Prime to take his Therapy Dog International Certification. As a Medical Student I am required to do 30 hours of service learning a year. One of the options we are given is to get our dog tested as a therapy dog and go to the nursing homes to visit. Yesterday we went and took our test. Here is a run down of our day.

Since Prime is still a 16 month old baby, he still gets the zoomies and can be a little rambunctious so we decided it would go to the dog park in the morning when i was done with my lab. We showed up at the dog park at noon and there was NO ONE there. Blast. Well we let him wander around for a while and chase Kevin a little bit. Well since it has rained every day for the last week here he got nice and muddy. Eventually a couple other dogs showed up but they were much smaller than him and not really in the mood to play. We were still trying to tire him out so we didn't want to bring him home and let him nap so.

We went to Petcetera, which is a really cute little boutique in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. One of the services the offer is a self-service dog wash. One of the things TDI grades you on is the appearance of your dog and whether or not they will accept a friendly stranger grooming them. We had never been to petcetera before but it was lots of fun. They have raised bathtubs at about waist height. Now, Prime is a little weird about bath tubs. He hates the bathtub in our house and I'm not sure why. He doesn't mind getting baths and the free standing dog bath tub in my sister's back yard, he will jump into without provocation. So i was a little weary and I will admit it was a bit of a struggle to get him into the tub. However i suspect that was because the steps leading up to the tub were tiled and really small for his gait. Once we got him into the tub however, he had a blast and was a perfect gentleman. We washed him with some lovely orange oil shampoo and he got cuddled by all the ladies in the shop and the two policemen who walked in off the street and said "now that's a REAL dog."

After our fun bath time we had one more chore before we could head out to testing. One of the items on the test is a "leave it" command. They have to walk within reach of really yummy food and when told to "leave it" they have to leave it alone and keep walking. Needless to say we wanted him to have a full tummy so as not to be tempted. So we packed him back into the car and went home to eat. After his lunch he was whooped ( I was so happy) and tried to fall asleep. So we packed him back into the car and went to the testing site.

We were testing at a Wal-mart parking lot (classy i know) in a little piece of landscaping that was on the outside of the parking lot. When we got there, there were a few other dogs, which isn't a problem because Prime loves other dogs. Except that if the evaluator hears growling the dogs are automatically disqualified, so if she hears growling but can't tell what dog it is coming from then our dog could get DQed. So it was fun trying to keep all the dogs calm when there were a couple of snippy dogs there.

Okay, so on to the actual test. Kevin and I both wanted to qualify as handlers for Prime and i honestly was a little worried because most of the time Kevin is Prime's handler, at his training classes. That's not to say that I don't work with him just that when he has been training Kevin has been handling him. The other thing is that fairly early on we started working Prime with choke/pinch collars, just as a power steering device because he was stronger than us when he was going through his "I'm a puppy and i want to pull at the end of the leash" phase. The TDI requirements are that the whole test be done on a flat collar without negative reinforcement (which includes pulling back on your leash, yikes). So Kevin and Prime did their test first. The first part is just accepting a friendly stranger, letting the evaluator come up and shake the handler's hand, pet the dog, look at his front feet and play with his ears. Prime had no problems, he loves people!

The second set of tests was listening to commands, will your dog sit and down when you ask them. Will the stay while you walk away from them. Will they come to the end of a 10 foot leash when you call them. Everyone got a kick out of this one when they saw this face coming toward them.

The next stage was the distractors stage. He had to prove that he can deal with a friendly dog, so the evaluator walked past us with her sheltie and they had to not try to get to the other dog. He had to deal with medical equipment, people on crutches making loud noises. He had to deal with a jogger running across his path and a distracting noise, in this case she was shaking something in a dog food bowl. I have to admit he is a little hard to maneuver in a distracting crowd, especially with how spastic his tail is but he did well. He also had to deal with supervised separation for 3 minutes. The evaluator held the leash and we had to walk out of view for 3 minutes and he had to not be overly anxious. She said he was a little upset but then he settled right down and that she suspects that has more to do with age than anything.

The final and hardest part (for us humans) was finding children, they have to prove that they can handle kids which prime has. As a total aside, last time we went to the snow ball stand (a frequent outing for us) there was a 4-year old kid who was enamored with Prime. This kid toddled over and latched his hands over Prime's snout and the lifted his legs. I was so proud, Prime held perfectly still so as not to drop the child. He was holding a kid up off the ground, it was so amazing. The best part is that the mom had been trying to keep the kid away because well my big black dog must be mean. It was really amusing. Anyway, so we walked up to the front of the Wal-mart and waited for some children to walk outside. We had to walk near them and he had to not show any anxiety, which he didn't.

We then switched, i took over handling and we did the whole test again. By the end of it he was hot and tired but he did everything so well. I kept telling him in the run up to the test that if he passed we would get him a cheese burger on the way home. So when we got home he had a victory cheese burger in the driveway. I am very proud of our little boy. He is now certified with Therapy Dogs International which along with that comes a significant insurance policy on the dog. As an added bonus, if they qualify for TDI they automatically qualify for CGC so he is also now a Canine Good Citizen.

There are a couple of things I'd like to start working on with him for the therapy visits, like a command to tell him to stop wagging his tail and being rambunctious so that he doesn't inadvertently injure an elderly person, but this too shall come. He will begin doing some therapy work either the end of this month or the beginning of next month at which point i will be posting loads of pictures. Until then, he has earned himself some couch time with mommy.