Meet SSD Lucky! He’s two months old today, and we’re going
to be following him throughout his training to become a service dog. He’s part
of our Fortune Litter, born on May 21.
Lucky is being raised by Becky Dombrowsky, one of our
long-time raisers. He’s the eighth dog she has raised. Do you know any of these
dogs?
- SSD Scotia, one of our former breeders
- SSD Bridge, currently working as a balance dog
- SSD Jade, one of our demonstration dogs
- Raptor, a beloved pet
- Larson, currently working as a detection dog with the United Nations
- Lincoln, a beloved pet
- SSD Larry, currently in advanced training
Lucky lives with Becky, her husband, Scotia, and four cats.
(Yes, you can raise a puppy if you have other animals in your family!) On
weekends, Larry returns from advanced training, adding another dog to the mix. Growing
up with other animals is a wonderful experience for our puppies in training
since we never know if their future partner will have pets.
But that’s a potential topic for the future. Today we’re
going to talk about early puppy experiences.
The goal is to expose the puppies to
12 new things every day. These new things can be sights, sounds, smells,
surfaces, places to potty, objects, and more. The key,
though, is to make sure each experience is a positive one so the puppy builds
up memories of lots of positive experiences they can draw on throughout the
rest of their training.
Lucky had a busy weekend! How many different experiences can
you count?
Over the weekend, Lucky went with Becky and her husband to
her parents’ house for a neighborhood yard sale. They spent the night, staying
in the guest room. Lucky slept in his crate, which is where he usually sleeps. However, unlike at home, Lucky’s crate was at the foot of the bed and he couldn’t
see Becky. There were two other Labradors in the house, and Lucky could hear
them move around the house at night, even though he couldn’t see them.
During the yard sale, Lucky practiced long down-stays, an
important skill for service dogs to perfect in all environments. Since many new
people stopped by the yard sale, he also worked on calm greetings with kids and
adults of all ages. (Even though people aren’t supposed to pet service dogs, we
still make sure our dogs learn how to properly greet people. We’ll talk about
that in a future blog post.)
Perhaps Lucky’s biggest new experience happened in the backyard.
Becky’s parents have a deck with wooden open riser stairs. Little Lucky calmly
trotted down the stairs to the grass without a problem. Going back up was a
different story. The backs of the stair were open and looked completely
different. He wasn’t sure he could go back up. “From my point of view, it
looked easy,” said Becky. “But from his view, it didn’t look safe or even
possible to get back up on the deck.”
She let Lucky explore the stairs without any pressure to
climb them, and as he got more comfortable, he walked up two steps! “We’ll
continue to expose him to stairs like this as he gets older,” said Becky.
How many experiences did you count? Let us know in the
comments. We’ll post the ones we counted tomorrow afternoon.
All of these new experiences are helping to prepare Lucky to
be a service dog. By law, he’ll be able to accompany his partner anywhere that’s
open to the public, so he needs to be able to calmly handle and even enjoy
being in many different environments.
Look for more posts about SSD Lucky in the future!
Help us build a new
training center for our puppies like Lucky! Donate today: https://crowdrise.com/susquehanna-capital-campaign
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