Refresher Training

After Covid hit, a lot of the things that I used to do with Nox stopped. We stopped going into "the office" to work, we stopped going out to eat at restaurants because they were closed, we stopped going out in public pretty much all together. As we all know, Covid changed our lives as we all knew it, but we adapted, and things just simply, changed. As hard as this was for us as humans, it was even harder for service dogs, because not only did we take away their social interactions of "dog parks" and "going out" we also made it harder to train. As a handler, it's important to be patient with your dog, and have that bond that both you and them are in sync. Recently I needed to go to the courthouse, and having never needed to be in that kind of building, Nox was ill prepared for it. It's important, especially in new venues, to train your dog to be understanding of their surroundings, and although this isn't always able to be done, sometimes it is. See for example our post on Preparing to Fly. So over the next couple of weeks we're working with our local courthouse to re-establish training, and proper service dog etiquette. For starters, today we worked with our local library to attend a "PupPals Read with me" event, you can sign up to join AKC's PupPals here. This helps with remembering to be "quiet and calm" in places of business.  AKC offers many programs that you can do from home too! Check out all the different programs here!