Before we talk about the actual training of Diamond, or Diamond at all for that matter, it’s probably ideal to give you all a brief snapshot of my life pre-Diamond, just for the sake of perspective.
I received my first guide dog in 2001 from an organization called Guide Dogs for the Blind located in northern California. He was a black Labrador who did adequate guide work and had unbelievably atrocious house manners. I do not blame the agency that trained this dog for his behavioral issues outside of the work, but my guess is that the family who raised him as a puppy understated the dog’s problems when returning the dog to GDB to complete his formal harness training. I opted to retire the dog in March of 2004 after he learned the most efficient way to break out of an airline crate and destroyed and/or ingested all kinds of things while I left him home for a few hours. The ddog’s guidework was not good enough for me to justify keeping him, so I placed him with a friend who wanted him for Agility and/or Flyball.
I left that March of 2004 in order to receive my second guide, who after several dog changes while in class (one dog switch is pretty common, 3 is not,) ultimately received a male yellow Labrador. He retired after only a few months of service because he had a lot of trouble dealing with the very intense traffic we had to deal with on a rregular basis. He was a super sweet boy and did nice work, but he needed to live in a less stressful working environment.
So onward to dog number 3, a female yellow Labrador, mostly a dark reddish color and had, from what I can recall, wonderful physical structure. Plus, she worked like a dream…fast, flashy, and accurate…except when she wasn’t. Again, this rarely happens, but my lovely little dog, the dog I thought would be my perfect match, decided that guiding was just too stressful, and had the canine equivalent of a nervous breakdown. It was nobodies fault, although a few trainers tried to make it mine, but we’ll move past that to January, 2006.
The retirement of the dog I’d assumed to be my perfect fit caused me an incredible amount of distress. I thought that the dog’s meltdown and subsequent retirement were my fault and that I had ruined my dog. So when a trainer I trusted implicitly called me to let me know he had a female black Lab for me, I truly didn’t know if I should train with another guide. I’m so glad I trusted my instructor and came to class despite many reservations. On January 15, 2006, I met Nestle, a 19-month old female black Labrador.
Nestle was 55 pounds of cuddles and instantly demanded ear scratches once I got my leash on her collar. 😀 We spent our first day together just working on some basic obedience and getting to know one another. And then, the next morning I finally got to work her, and while there were no angels singing from on high, rainbows, or anything, Nestle and I were a good fit for each other.
I’m not dwelling too much on the rest of my time with Nestle, except to say that she was the perfect balance between confidence and controllability. She moved all kinds of places with me and worked everywhere from the chaos of Berkeley to the tranquility of Mure Woods. She was truly the consummate guide dog, and taught me how it feels to have a reliable, intelligent, and ever-loyal partner at my side. She was truly one of the extraordinary, once in a lifetime dogs.
In August of 2011, I believe, or perhaps just before then, Nestle began exhibiting weird behaviors. Mainly, she began to hate anything to do with crates. A dog who used to often curl up on her fluffy crate matt or lie on a rug under my desk while I worked suddenly refused to enter any crate for any reason. One of the advantages of working at a guide dog school was that I got lots of ideas to try in order to get my princess through this problem, but nothing worked. One of GDB’s graduate services instructors asked if he could observe Nestle and I in general and go on a route together. He had a theory at that point, which he didn’t tell me until later, and his theory was proven to be correct. The route we took that day was from the GDB campus to a local coffee shop. We got there, bought our respective beverages, and then we had the talk. Everyone who has worked multiple service dogs knows what kind of talk I mean. For the rest of you, this was the “it’s ttime to start the process for a new dog” talk. From what I can recall, my trainer friend basically explained that Nestle was beginning to show signs of stress and that working her on a guide dog school campus was causing her a lot of burnout, so he figured we’d need to retire her in about 6 months or so.
I actually got about another year out of my Nestles because I left GDB for a number of reasons, and subsequently decided to train Nestle’s successor myself rather than attend another guide dog program.
The reasons I made that choice and how Diamond and I found each other will be covered in my next post.
The Diamond Diaries 