Barely and I ended up taking a trip to Whipple Dam again today because the dog park was a muddy mess and so were all the dogs playing in it. I'm not usually a clean freak about my car but I really didn't have the energy to give Bare a bath and scrape mud off my seats. We only stayed at the lake for a little while because there were guys ice fishing and I was worried Barely might run out there to them (she never actually tried, but she did give them a few glances). She has some solid recalls there until she found this rather large rock-looking thing and decided it would be fun to run around like crazy with it. Eventually I convinced her to drop it and we headed out to Target. I prefer Target over Walmart for the sole reason that it's way less crowded and people (thankfully) generally ignore us. I'm happy to say that not one person tried to pet Barely or even asked to. I love when people leave us alone!!!
She had an awesome down/stay in the book isle. I put her in position and then walked a little further down the isle to look at some books. As soon as I walked away a mother and her little boy came up the isle. The little boy looked like he really wanted to pet Barely but the mother told him he wasn't allowed to (yay for her!!). Bare turned her head to watch the little boy as he walked by within inches of her and her tail thumped a few times on the ground but she didn't change her position or move an inch. Then she looked right at me as if to say, "Didn't I do good, Mom?"
I'm really pleased with how good she has gotten at ignoring distractions in public. The one thing we definitely need to work on is stopping her from trying to sniff/lick/pick up things on the ground. She has a tendency to sniff noticeable spots on the ground. I'm beginning to wonder if I play an unintentional part in this though. I've recently noticed she seems more likely to notice something on the ground if I notice it first and look at it. Today she ignored a variety of things on the floor that I also ignored so maybe there's some truth to that claim??
The lady at the register told me she is raising two guide dogs (don't remember what organization it was for), a Lab and German Shepherd. She asked me what Barely will do as a service dog and we swapped condolences on having to give them up soon (her shepherd is going into training in a couple weeks). On the bus ride from the lot I park my car in, another woman asked me about her. Although I hate when people try to pet or talk to Barely, I love when people ask me directly about her training and how she'll help someone someday. I could probably go on forever about what Barely knows and what she will do and service dogs in general (hence this blog!). I like enlightening people about service dogs so that they hopefully will go share that information with other people. If everyone knew even just a little about service dogs and what they do than maybe there wouldn't be so many ignorant people out there causing problems for service dog teams!!
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