Flashback to My Dog Adventure: days 2 & 3

I woke up this morning with the folks who are attending Canine Companions for Independence's Team Training on my mind.  One of the most important events of the two week course happens on this, the first Wednesday - Preliminary Match Day! The first two days each student works with numerous dogs to give the trainers a chance to determine who works best with whom. It goes without saying that it was not hard to get up and to class in a timely fashion on Wednesday to finally get some insight into what they'd observed and find out which dog we could finally begin to give our hearts to! Below I recount my experience of Preliminary Match Day! 

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Hi everyone!
I'm so excited to share this latest installment of the doggy adventure with you! Briefly, yesterday was a challenging day for me! I had a chance to work with four different dogs throughout the day - Tamali and Dash again, and also Pluto and Juanita. The morning lecture that day was on how to give the dog a correction when it did not comply with a command. It takes both a vocal correction - "no" - and a physical correction - a quick pop of the leash. Needless to say, my physical corrections were less than effective, which can cause the dog not to put much stock in my leadership and therefore decide to ignore almost everything I asked! All of that to say, I left class yesterday a bit frustrated, very tired, but not at all without hope that things would get better and that this was nothing insurmountable.
Today was a whole new ballgame! (Side-note - speaking of ballgames, Go Tribe!) Today was the day we were assigned our dogs! Just to add a little suspense to the big reveal (ha ha!) I will tell you that I went into this thinking that by the end of the first day or two I would have a definite favorite and a definite least favorite. I was prepared to give myself talks on not getting to set on one dog because I might not end up with that dog at all! I did leave Tuesday afternoon thinking that I worked better with some dogs than others (Juanita, Dash, and Ansel) but I was not head over heels. I knew that the trainers knew so much more than I and just trusted they would pick the right dog for me! They have been working with the dogs for the past nine months so they know the temperaments and abilities of each dog far better than I! Soooo..... taking into account temperament, abilities, and size .... I was assigned .... the best, cutest, sweetest, smartest, best smelling, high achieving, wonderful, terrific, astounding, charming, handsome .... DASH!  
And you wouldn't believe how well today went! It was as if over night the trainers told the dogs "Okay, this is your for-real handler tomorrow, so you might as well do what she says!" As soon as Dash was presented to me in all his black lab glory, he sat, on my command! We spend the day learning new commands together and bonding with each other. Such a sweet and FUN time!
Of course I am attaching a few pics, and I will try to get a few more on Facebook in the next few days (a little incentive for those of you that don't have an account yet!)
Thank you all so much for your words of encouragement and prayers! They have helped to cheer me on!
More to come soon ....
Love,
Emily