Making Progress (on our way to therapy work)

[shay19]

So Aida, the stubborn one, has been making TONS of progress on her social skills. I took her to petsmart yesterday to get ferret food and she walks right in now, approaches everyone she see's and has even *almost* stopped having reactions to other dogs while she's on leash.

She still doesn't know very many commands, but by herself she's a wonderful dog, you'd never know that I rarely work with her..

Anyway, the whole reason I posted. Aida was "approved" to go visit my great grandma in a nursing home! I called and said she's in training to become a therapy dog and that she's very shy so I wanted to get her around the people and equipment before taking the test and they said as long as she's friendly they're perfectly okay with it!

I thought this would be a good place to try since she's not certified and my grandpa takes his dogs in there as well (neither are certified either). And I'm so excited! We're going to take a trip out today and see how it goes.

*I posted here because I'm sure I'll have behavior/training questions after our visit, but I was just too excited to wait and needed to share lol*

[loverocksalot]

In case you have not left yet just want to say, Please be careful, Dont set her up to even scratch someone. Maryellen advised me not to take Rocky into places where any incident could happen until he is certified. And I did exactly that. You are lucky to be approved to do so as Rocky is certified and I have not found it easy to get approval. For example some places require tb test and an interview. However I suppose if it were a relative might be different. There are many things to consider before taking your dog into a hospital environment. The biggest one to me is the leave it command and that they could pass the leave it test. In case a pill were to drop on floor.

[shay19]

Thanks CA for the input, I totally get where you're coming from.

We're going around their lunch so she probably won't get much interaction with people anyway. I'm more focusing on how she does in the environment and around the equipment (the wheelchairs, walkers, walking on the slick floor, etc.) since it'll be very new to her.

Also, in public she will "leave it". She just won't do it at home, go figure lol.

The reason I picked this facility to try is because they're very relaxed and allow quite a few dogs to enter without certification. I made sure they understood she's training and very shy. I'll be with her every step of the way so I won't allow set ups for failure, I know she'd be great at this and really want her to enjoy it.

[emilys]

that's great! While I absolutely support ME's warnings and concerns about preventing scratches or other injuries to old people, I also want to encourage your efforts. I took both Ozzy and Mr P to visit my mom at her nursing home. They're not certified but the NH did allow nice dogs. I was super careful about not letting Mr P visit with anyone other than mom and the staff, because he's not always well mannered. But Ozzy was always so gentle (and he can't jump anyway) and wanting attention that he was a big hit. It made a huge difference to the residents, many of whom used to have dogs and really missed them. I would always ask first if someone wanted to pet him, and was extra careful about avoiding people who seemed even the slightest bit wary.

BTW, there was a certified Therapy Dog program and those dogs came to visit residents as well. Some of them seemed to HATE what they were being asked to do..

[loverocksalot]

Ok good glad you realize just training only visit with Grandma. When I visited Nursing home most of the patients were pretty far gone and had little interest in Rocky anyway. A few really wanted him up in their laps. I think Rocky prefers to be around Children but I could be wrong. He has not told me yet.