Doggies!

I met the trainer I'd talked to on the phone and saw two of the dogs she's trained today.  One of the dogs is almost done with his training and the other has a little longer to go but both were able to demonstrate things like sitting, down, heeling, opening and closing doors, and retrieving things.  We went for a short walk with one of the dogs and I got to hold the leash and tell him to heel and she showed me what she does when he starts to get ahead of her on a walk.  He was really sweet.  When he started to get ahead of me I told him to heel and he did and then he looked at me and I could tell what he wanted was a treat.  He also really liked sniffing my sandals (I think they smelled like my cats) and licked my feet for a bit.

She told me that service dogs can do more than three tasks, that what she had meant was that they typically only train three tasks before placing the dog with the handler, but then more tasks can be added on.  She said she meant that it's too hard for a dog to learn more than three tasks at the same time, which makes plenty of sense to me.  I think she just wasn't explaining things well over the phone.  Or I just misunderstood, but I  think it was more how she was saying it.

Anyway, she said she thought she would be able to train a dog to do the things I need him to do but that some of the things I would need to work on further after I brought the dog home, and that all made sense to me.  I'm very excited now.  I still need to get the paperwork form my doctor, which I should get sometime next week, and send that in and the director should be calling me sometime next week to talk about when they might have a dog that would be ready for me.