Mary
MemberForum Replies Created
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Mary
MemberJanuary 10, 2022 at 12:44 AM in reply to: teaching stay out of kitchen, stay on bed and stay away from a personThank you for your message but I’m going to be honest that I feel somewhat insulted that two people now have suggested to me that perhaps I cannot handle having a dog given that I am a single parent with a handicapped child and that I shouldn’t feel bad if I decide to ditch the dog. In fact things are going very well. My dog has been very successful at learning to leave my son alone and stay off the counters. She is also completely potty trained at only four months. And she is having a blast taking walks with me on a 30ft line along the beach and in the forest frolicking happily in deep snow. We already have a very strong bond and taking care of her adds a structure to my life that I find deeply helpful. So I respectfully ask that no-one else tell me not to feel bad if I have to get rid of her because I can’t handle it.
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Mary
MemberDecember 23, 2021 at 5:53 AM in reply to: teaching stay out of kitchen, stay on bed and stay away from a personhi and thanks for your reply. when you say spatial pressure does that basically mean blocking with your body? i am a new member and i am just starting to watch the videos so i dont want to ask a question to robert until i have seen all the content. so happy i found this site because i was watching all types of videos willy nilly on youtube and becoming overwhelmed. i really need one particular approach to follow and this site is so the perfect thing for me!
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Mary
MemberJanuary 14, 2022 at 2:18 AM in reply to: teaching stay out of kitchen, stay on bed and stay away from a personhi thanks for your response. i did not realize you were looking at it from a service dog training angle. i should not have taken it personally. her name is maya. i named her before joining the site but i was watching dog training videos willy nilly on youtube for a year before getting her. the name maya just came into my head the day after I got her. possibly a coincidence or possibly subconsciously i remembered one of robert’s videos with his maya. she is an awesome dog. so intelligent and fun! and very adapted to the cold environment here for the winter. she came from a very remote northern native community where there are lots of dogs that run a bit wild in all weather. she is german shepherd predominate mixed with lab and husky of some type. she seems to like agility so i will have to search the site for that. also doing great on retrieves in the house.
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Mary
MemberDecember 24, 2021 at 2:18 PM in reply to: teaching stay out of kitchen, stay on bed and stay away from a personthanks so much for your lovely message. i spent a bunch of time writing a long reply but then it disappeared when I tried to edit a typo—so disappointing!
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Mary
MemberDecember 24, 2021 at 5:03 AM in reply to: teaching stay out of kitchen, stay on bed and stay away from a personThanks so much for this explanation and also for the video names which I will search and watch now.
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Mary
MemberDecember 24, 2021 at 2:30 AM in reply to: teaching stay out of kitchen, stay on bed and stay away from a personHi Takoda and thanks so much for your message and thoughtful feedback. However now I am a bit confused because I just watched a video of Robert’s about stay that made me think I should only reward once the stay was released. Maybe it’s the difference between stay and place? Or maybe its that he was working with Goofy in the video who is a well-trained adult rather than a puppy.
In terms of having the dog interact with my son, of course it would be great for the dog, but not necessarily for my son. He is not typical at all, and although he says he likes the dog and is fine with us keeping the dog, he clearly does not want to pet her or be around her at all. This morning while he was eating at the table I was holding her back sitting next to me on the floor, but he can’t serve himself and he asked for me to get him something. I felt I had to put her in her crate because had I let her go to go serve him she would have started jumping on him and nipping at his feet and he would most likely have gone back into his room.
I did not get the dog as a companion for my son. I looked into that with organizations that train dogs as companions for autistic kids and they told me he would not pass their screening evaluation because for the relationship to be useful the child has to show a certain amount of interest in the dog. I got the dog as a companion for myself, because single mom to a severely impaired child is a bit of a hard gig and extremely isolating. The idea is really for my relationship with the dog (and my walking in nature with the dog) to help keep me in a good head space, which by extension is obviously beneficial for my son. That is why I think my emphasis for now should be on teaching the dog to just basically ignore my son if possible, so he can move around the house as he wishes without her bothering him. Then maybe some sort of relationship might develop but my intuition tells me that trying to force a relationship is a bad idea.