Sad. Yesterday was the last day of school. Teaching is a crazy business. Every year you start with these new crazy kids, and by June when they leave you can’t imagine not seeing them the next day. I always spend the last two days of school crying in my room. This year the end of school has been particularly hard because I am leaving my school for one closer to home. It makes a lot of financial sense for me to leave, I’m just trying to convince my heart of that.
As a treat for my kids, yesterday I brought Betty to school with me. Betty loooooves kids. Around kids she becomes amazingly calm and quiet. One time, when we had some friends over for dinner, their one year old daughter actually stuck her fingers up Betty’s nose. And she just lied there. Every year at my school on the last day there is a softball game between the teachers and 6th graders. There is literally 580 kids on the playground, either playing or watching. Betty was just mauled by kids. There would be 5-8 kids petting her at any time. Betty, my beautiful, sweet girl, just took it all in and stood there, wagging her tail as the stream of kids kept coming. When the autistic girl grabbed her around the neck, she stood there. When the blind paraplegic girl grabbed a handful of her skin instead of petting with and open hand, she just stood there. Betty was so good, I was amazed.
Since we met Betty, I’ve been considering getting her trained as a reading therapy dog. She has such a calm demeanor that I think she could great work for struggling children. I have just one hesitation, if Betty knows P. or I is nearby and we are not with her, she barks. I mean loud, panicked barking. Hmm. Any suggestions?
P.S. Check out the new pictures I put up on Flickr!
I think Betty would be a great Read dog. She would probably be good at other volunteer work with kids or elderly people. I don’t think people mind the barking since she is so gentle.
I don’t know the details of reading therapy dogs but assuming the basics will be the same with any therapy dog, so both the handler(s) and dog will be required to be together. You would be responsible for the dog and would never be asked to leave. Delta society who normally test to see if the dog meets the requirement to be a therapy dog will test the handler also, you both have to pass.
A few ideas about how to stop the barking..
.go to obedience class, sometimes dogs just need more confidence and training the basics really help, even agility classes or rally if you already have done basic
.exercise before going out with the dog, a quick run or game of fetch
.train Betty to not bark by slowly, very slowly extend the distance from her and reward her for being quiet with a small treat that you can toss to her for being good
Anyways, go ahead and go for the reading dog therapy you can always work on not barking while you are doing therapy. Its tons of fun working with therapy dogs and the dogs are quite proud of themselves also.
Thanks Paige! After posting this, I went back to Intermountain Therapy Animals page to remind myself of their requirements; and you’re right, I will be with her the entire time, so the barking shouldn’t occur.
There is one bummer though, we can’t train until October, their last training for the summer was this weekend. Oh well. We’ll just keep on waiting!
Are you familiar with canine good citizen from AKC? You could be working on this while you wait on the dog therapy group to start. Any luck with stopping the barking and with your new pup having panic attacks?