She's Amazing

It's official - 'Lil Miss is a natural.

On Friday, I took her to my barn, where she had her first contact with horses. No nipping, no barking, no growling, no nothing. She was a little intimidated by Toby, the obnoxious stray that is now the barn dog, because he is overly loud whenever another dog shows up, but she wasn't scared of him. She got a little closer to a couple of the horses' hind ends than I'd like, but that was because I thought the leash was shorter than it was so she got a little close on my part, and because of a little resisting on the leash on her part.

Lila also had her first grooming appointment on Saturday, and it was also our first week together. When we dropped her off, the woman who I spoke to about her grooming needs before we got her recognized me and snatched her up in an instant. When we got her back, she had nothing but praise for her - and a cute little bow in her hair. Of course, I didn't get any pictures with her in it before we left to go to a family dinner, and she had ripped it out by the time we got home. Oh, Lila...

But, I am continually amazed at what a natural she is at what Pilot Dogs consider absolute essentials in a seeing-eye dog. As we've had her at home, I've noticed she's got a very confident attitude. She'll go right up to my seventy five pound, two foot tall mutt and have absolutely no fear at all, but, at the same time, she's not aggressive towards her. Lila's not food or toy posessive either, and you can take them away at any time with no issues at all. And to put it all to boot, the little girl learns quickly. By the second day with us, she had learned sit and come. She's now preforming sit pretty much one hundred percent of the time, come is about eighty percent, and she's learning stay and quiet.

And she's also learning how to walk.

She had her first "walk" today. We really only walked about half a block, but it was her first time out on the leash. "Working position" is to the person's left and slightly ahead of them, but not pulling on the leash. The only adjustment to get her in working position was putting her on my left side. She hardly ever pulled on the leash during our short walk, and she was always slightly ahead of me. We had a few sticky spots where she would just sit down and refuse to move, but those didn't last long and she continued right on as normal.

At night, she's starting to quiet down much faster, along with not barking the minute she gets in her kennel. Like I said, she learns fast and is improving quickly.

Our big event for this next week is her first vet visit with us for her second set of puppy shots on Wednesday. Oh boy. This shall be fun.

-Kaylyn