Month: August 2024

Too Much Fun?

Pam Hogle The Thinking Dog Blog

Goldens Dotty and Orly sit on a colorful outdoor rug. Dotty is covered in black mud.Missoula experienced a long “heat dome” with what seemed like months of 95+ temperatures. Added to our long summer days — in July, it’s light out until nearly 10 pm — it was brutal. (We have no air conditioning.)

As a recent post shared, we tried lots of ways to keep cool. It’s possible that Dotty might have gone a bit overboard.

On one of their hikes, the girls encountered a mud puddle. Cool, wet — what’s not to love?

While Orly’s legs and belly were pretty muddy, which is to be expected when one wades into a muddy puddle, Dotty flung her entire front half into the mud. My normally white dog was black. But cool, very cool.

And, judging from her expression, pretty pleased with herself.

Cleaner goldens sit on the an outdoor rug with grumpy expressions on their facesOrly’s more worried expression, once back at home, might have been born of experience.

These dogs were not allowed into the house.

Nope; they were marched straight to the backyard for the indignity of a hosing-off.

What? No warm water??!!

In their post-hosing-off photo, Dotty’s glum expression matches Orly’s. The price of fun …

Somehow, I doubt that she regards it as too high — or will even remember it. And, to be fair, they got to enjoy some frozen yogurt-banana-peanut butter treats while drying off on the deck. (Even Mean Mom has a softer side …)

Next time Dotty sees a mud puddle, watch out!

Dotty, a usually white golden retriever, wears a huge smile --- and a generous coat of black mud

 

 

Dotty’s Career Prep Begins

Pam Hogle The Thinking Dog Blog , , ,
Dotty, a white golden retriever, looks at a table with a timer, a plastic container of treats, and one small dog biscuit
Dotty has learned not to take the treat until she hears the sound

Dotty is getting ready for her future career: She’s going to be a hearing assistance dog. Hearing dogs assist people with hearing loss by alerting them to key sounds, such as a timer, a smoke alarm, a doorbell — even someone calling their name.

During her last weeks with us, Dotty is practicing the first steps in hearing-dog training. We set a timer. I place a cookie near the timer and guide Dotty away. Initially just a few feet, but we’ve expanded the distance a bit.

Dotty, a white golden retriever, eats a small biscuit that was on a table with her sound work timer and treat box
Returning to the table in response to the timer’s beeping, Dotty eats her reward

When the timer rings, Dotty goes to it and eats the cookie. That’s the easy part. Then, she is supposed to come and alert me. We introduce this with another cookie (are you beginning to see why Dotty loves practice sessions?). She nudges my leg and gets the cookie. I then ask her “What?” She is supposed to lead me to the sound and, you guessed it, get another cookie. (The cookies are very small.)

When Orly is home, she sometimes tries to steal the first cookie. If she refrains and heads back at the end of the alert, she gets a ‘good helper’ cookie.

As Dotty gets better at this, we can make things tougher. The first thing we’re doing is adding more time between when Dotty sees me set things up and the timer rings.

We’ll als0 add more distance, with me waiting in a different room or even hiding from her. Eventually, we’ll start working with a second sound. We’ll go back to the basics, with her watching me set it up and the sound alerting only a few seconds later.

As she progresses, her professional trainer will continue to make things more difficult — adding new sounds, increasing distance and time, and moving to unpredictable alerts, where Dotty would not see the setup happening. That’s all pretty far away for her.

In her more advanced trainer, she might also learn different responses to some sounds. For example, if she’s alerting to a smoke alarm, she might lead me to the door — not to the alarm.

We’re only at the early stage of her training, and Dotty is an enthusiastic learner who learns quickly.