Today Hestia was Miss Wild Thang! After Brad woke up, I played my violin. Hestia decided this would be an excellent time to try to play with the music stand! She play bowed at it, pounced at it, and pawed at it repeatedly, no matter how much I tried to get her to stop. It was very annoying! I have no idea what about the music stand she found so fascinating, it was just standing there!
After a shower, we headed out to meet a service dog in training team to administer the Manners Evaluation. It turns out I had met this team, a woman, her husband, and her Great Pyrenees named Avalanche, about a year and a half ago at the start of their service dog journey! We had lost contact in the mean time, but they took my advice and got some good foundational obedience from Courteous Canine.
It was great to see them again, and Avalanche did very well on her Manners Evaluation. Hestia, on the other hand, looked like she was still in training instead of a fully trained service dog! She kept leaping up at people wanting to say hello and sniffing the floor. It was SO embarrassing! I tried my best to train through it, but boy did it get on my nerves! I think all three of us (Hestia, Brad, and me) are exhausted from all our travel, and this was Hestia’s way of telling me that she did not feel like working. We made it through and managed to have fun while doing it, though!
After our session, we went to Walmart to pick up some chicken quarters for Ollie. They had them for only 54 cents a lb! We have decided to go to partial raw for Ollie, as his poops and health have never been as good as when we had him on raw. Brad and I aren’t sure we are up to cutting up stuff, so we are going to try half and half for a while and see how that works. A chicken leg quarter is just over a meal for Ollie, so I can feed him less than a normal meal of kibble for breakfast, and a chicken quarter for dinner. He will be sooooo happy when I give it to him tonight for dinner!
Hestia was full of energy in Walmart, though more focused since I was able to focus more of my attention on her. She has been calmer since we arrived home, thank goodness! I will try to get her on a long walk tomorrow while the weather is still cool to help her destress from all our travel!
Brad got a picture of Avalanche and her mom with Hestia and me! Avalanche’s mom is wearing a pink shirt and black leggings. Avalanche is a big fluffy white dog with a pink vest on. I am wearing my turquoise flamingo dress, and Hestia is next to me with her purple mesh vest on.
Avalanche is very pretty! Great pic of everyone. 😉
Wear that wild like you own it, Hestia! Avalanche is beautiful! So happy to see the manners eval being used as much as it is. I like it so much better than the CGC for service dogs in training. In fact Toby and my trainer will be using it to test us for public access training readiness! Thank you again for developing such a great test!