Using Parallel Parking

Yesterday Lily and I spent the day running errands on base.  It was a busy day there.  An aircraft carrier has just returned and everywhere we went there were crowds of sailors.

While waiting to get my military ID renewed, there was only one place for Lily to be out of the way - in a narrow space beside my chair ON MY RIGHT SIDE.  It didn't turn out quite as slick as it did at home when training the behavior....and we were out and about without clicker or treats....but Lily accomplished the parallel parking, with a little help.  We will add some work on this into our training this week.

First, a "review" here at home and then I will prepare to generalize it on the road, with clicker and treats.

That's the way it works with many behaviors.  Lily has learned the behaviors and becomes accomplished at them.  Yet, when the need for the behavior is "few and far between" BOTH of us tend to forget about it in the interim.  I forget to review it and Lily forgets how to do it.  Especially when needing to perform the behavior on her right side.

We spent a lot of our day waiting our turn.  And we met many sailors who wanted to talk about Weimaraners they had known!  Hunting dogs.  Pet dogs.  Even another Weim service dog.  Lily is a wonderful ice breaker.  She leaves people smiling wherever we go on base.  There seems to be nothing like a dog to bring memories of home.  Sailors not only want to PET Lily.....they want to HUG her.  And that's ok with us.