Emory is beginning to get into the routine of things.  She has three to four training sessions per day.  I'm trying to phase out of cheese and meat rewards, and instead just use her meals as rewards.  With older dogs like Emory, I use high value rewards from the beginning to create a connection and have the dog view people as wonderful.  But then I like to transition to using mainly meals for training, except for recalls.  Today she went on two very long walks, so she was pretty hungry this evening.  Because of this I introduced a Nina Ottosson puzzle, and put her kibbles in the puzzle.  I made it very simple for her, so she barely had to nudge the pieces, but she caught on to it.  After the 2nd refill I made it a little more difficult so she actually had to move the pieces.  She was quite persistent with it though; this persistency will be necessary if she qualifies to be a DAD.  

As for her commands, her eye contact is phenomenal.  Actually, it's a little too good.  I trained the eye contact with the clicker because of its precision, and now Emory loves to give eye contact! If she wants anything, she will sit or lie down and stare at me.  I reward her for this sometimes, but cannot reward it every time since she gives it so often.  As she learns more things, she will begin to perform other actions to get a reward, but for now this is the only thing she knows really well, so she is giving it 110% with the hope of getting a nice piece of cheese for it!  I'm thrilled with how quickly she caught on to it though.

She still complains when left alone, even if it is just for 2 seconds....literally.  When I'm getting ready for school in the morning she is in the room with me, if I leave to grab something, she will immediately whine and cry loudly.  When I return, she spins and jumps and wiggles all over, unable to contain herself.  While it's nice to feel loved, I hope that with consistency and routine she settles down a little bit and trusts that I will come back.  

At this point she is still with me on a leash 24/7 if she is not in her crate.  She seems to be calming down a little during these times.  She used to not know how to settle and would circle and pace quite a bit before chilling, now she is beginning to understand that this is just what we do and it is her time to relax and take a quick nap or chew on something. 

Yesterday I introduced touch.  I held out my hand and clicked at any recognition that my hand existed.  Gradually only clicked when she got closer.  Now she will sniff my hand and lightly touch the end of my fingers that are held out.  We will keep working on this until I can get a persistent and firm touch at the center of my hand.  I used this command a lot with Sadie - much more than I anticipated.  I used it for things like positioning her in her "under" and to get her in the car.  

We will begin focusing more on other commands such as down and stand, and continue touch.  I'd like to begin scent training this weekend or the beginning of next week.  

After many discussions and google searches, I think we have decided on a name - Emory!  

When I got home from school yesterday I took her on a long walk around the farm.  Unfortunately it was disgusting whether - wind and cold, pelting rain.  Emory's not thrilled with rain, but after the first five minutes of the walk she stopped pausing to shake off so often and got used to it a little.  Her heeling is atrocious; she's never been taught to heel, so I wouldn't expect anything else, but I'm anxious to teach her to heel so we can go on a civilized walk.  Thankfully she is only 15 pounds, so even when she runs full speed to the end of her leash, my arm is not being ripped off.  Depending on how her training goes, I'll begin heeling work shortly.  

She's learned to come to us when we call her name and is getting a little better at sitting.  She loves jumping up on people, so when we call her she used to come and launch herself at our legs.  Now she runs full speed towards us, and will jump once then get back on the floor, look at us, and sit.  So, it's progress at least.   I love watching her consciously make the decision to sit in order to get her treat though! 

Last night I worked on charging the clicker, click then treat.  She had a small lunch so I used plain kibble as a reward.  We did about 30 repetitions or so.  Towards the end she was catching on though and would stop what she was doing to retrieve her reward.

This morning she wasn't hungry enough to use plain kibble, so I upgraded to cheese.  I began to work on eye contact.  Before this session I had never received eye contact from her, she would look at me or at the rewards I had, but never give me eye contact. So I began this morning by just rewarding her for sitting (still not using any words or commands), I lured her into a down a few times as well.  Then one time when she sat, I withheld the reward but made a little kissy noise with my mouth.  As soon as she looked towards the noise - my face - I clicked and treated.  I did this again, but required actual eye contact, just for a split second, rather than just looking at my face.  I did this about three times, interspersed with rewarding for regular sits and lured a down or two (she's quite energetic so all this took a few minutes as she gets distracted easily).  Then I stopped making the noise and when she sat, just withheld the treat, and she gave me eye contact on her own.  Clicked and treated of course.  I repeated this about 20 times or so, again interspersed with other behaviors.  At the beginning, she still didn't quite understand, so she would sit and look at the cheese in my hand, then get up.  One time, she sat and looked at the cheese, then looked at my face (no eye contact so no reward), then laid down - first time she offered a down on her own, after only being lured into a down a few times.  She got a reward for that!  She began to offer eye contact faster and faster as she began to understand what I wanted from her.  

Yesterday and today she's mainly been discovering that she controls when she gets the reward; by adjusting her behavior and performing certain actions.  Basically, she's learning to learn.  Once she fully understands this, she will begin to want to work for me and be more focused on what I want, because then she gets what she wants.  I'm very pleased with how she's doing.  She's still a little skittish of certain things, such as dark rooms and objects outside at night, but she may already be getting better.  I think she will continue to improve with this as she begins to trust me and people in general more, she will then start to look to me for reassurance and feed off of my confidence.  Hopefully, eventually she will feed off this confidence and then as a result become immune to these things; I'm still unsure though because she was in a kennel environment for a long time compared to most the dogs I work with.

I plan to begin adding the verbal cue for sit, and continue luring downs.  We will also continue working on eye contact and greeting politely - no jumping.  

So far so good though!  

Lately I've been working on college applications, so have not been training any pups for a lack of time. Also though, I had previously decided I wouldn't train another DAD so that I could have a "senior year" - have fun, hang out with friends, etc.  This was a great idea for a few weeks, but then I started really missing having a project - especially a DAD.  I have my two dogs that I work with some, but I really missed the DAD training and the challenge.  So, a few weeks ago I started looking at available Comfort Retrievers, just perusing with no real intention of anything (or so I told myself).  Then I saw an older pup at Kathy's and my wheels started spinning, it seemed to have a good temperament and was small and super friendly.  After thinking on it for a few days, I decided to ask Kathy if it was still available - I had a plan. But, I had waited a few days too long and it was reserved.  One of its siblings was still available though.  I made a deal with myself, when I submitted all of my college applications, I could give my "plan" a shot.  I submitted my final application and on Sunday, I went to see the pup, "Brandy".  Of course, I didn't just go to "see" the dog, I ended up bringing her home. 

My plan:

For some reason, I want another challenge (I think I'm addicted to them), so I don't want to just create another DAD, I want to do it differently.  My solution, is to try to train a DAD without imprinting, many people have done it, so it is possible, but it almost seemed too easy with Sadie because she always recognized the scent of low blood sugar.  

I need to get started training early, because ideally the DAD would go to the new home permanently as late as possible, so that it has time to mature a little more (most service dog training organizations place dogs at 18 - 24 months).  This is why I'm trying Brandy first.  When I go to college in the fall, Brandy will be 11 months old.  If I was to start with an 8 week old puppy, then it would be 9 months old, and that's only if there was a pup available and I started right now.  But, there are some drawbacks to using Brandy that make me unsure of whether she will make the cut to become a DAD:

1) She's been living in a kennel so far, so she hasn't gotten the extensive exposure to new situations that a service dog needs
2) I'm going to have to un-train bad behaviors since she is older - jumping, barking, etc. With Sadie, she never learned bad behaviors because she was never allowed to do them and she learned a lot from our dogs.  (Sadie hadn't even hear a verbal reprimand until she was 5 months old! :).
3) She is not used to working for people, and at this older age I'm not sure how this will affect her. 

So, to continue on with my plan, I'm going to give Brandy a shot for a few weeks - see if she has potential.  If so, I will continue training her to be a DAD.  If not, then she will be sold as a pet, and I will begin again with an 8 week old Comfort. 

For whichever dog I end up training to be a DAD, I would like to teach a bringsel alert.  Sadie used a paw, which was quite effective except that when she was excited, she would sometimes act as if she was alerting - making it a little difficult to differentiate.  A bringsel alert would be much clearer and if the dog is going to a child, then they would easily be able to tell the dog is alerting.  Being able to teach a bringsel alert depends a lot on the dog though, if the dog enjoys having things in his/her mouth, then great.  But if h/s does not, then we will stick with the paw because the dog has to enjoy alerting, otherwise it will not be as effective.  

As for Brandy, I'm still deciding on a name for her, hopefully we will come up with one soon, "Puppy, puppy" is a little boring.  

Sunday I brought her home and gave her a bath.  Then we worked on some informal comes - calling her happily and rewarding with turkey whenever she came to me.  She had no clue that me talking had anything to do with her - she still has to learn how to learn.  After a few bits of turkey though, she was much more interested in me!  A little bit about her: she's very sweet and likes affection.  She loves toys, especially the furry tug toys, but also thoroughly enjoys shredding paper.  She worked at the Kong when there was turkey inside and seemed to be pretty persistent considering she hasn't had any experience with it.  When first put in her kennel she whined for 5 minutes or so, but then settled down and didn't make another noise all night - or at least that I know of, I'm known to sleep through some pretty loud puppies though. She doesn't like being left alone; when I leave her in my room or bathroom by herself, she tries to squeeze through the door with me, but when I shut the door she starts whining and crying.  When I return she bounces and jumps and squiggles in excitement - quite a greeting since I've known her for about 12 hours!  Hopefully this will fade some over the next few days, rather than turn into separation anxiety.  But, it's a good in a sense because she is a people pleaser.  

We are going to work on charging the clicker, getting her to learn a click means a treat.  We are also going to work on eye contact, not jumping up, and start with sitting.  She will mostly be eating out of my hand through training, and through food puzzles like Kongs and Nina Ottosson's dog puzzles.  Hopefully this will help get her in the mindset of working for food and being persistent.  We will also start on tug, she loves playing with toys, but doesn't know how to properly tug yet, so I'll be working on teaching her the rules of the game, such as no touching skin.  We will begin scent training in a few days/weeks, depending on how the basic obedience progresses.  

I have a huge list of things I'm going to differently with her, not that I wasn't happy with Sadie - I was thrilled! But I have a list of new challenges that I'd like to try, as wells as a few tweaks and areas that I'd like to focus more on.  

So, that's my new project, we will see how it goes and what happens with it!  

I received a text from Joe, Mackenzie's dad, that Sadie alerted to a low of 71 last night!  This was the first time that Sadie woke up Mackenzie successfully enough for Mackenzie to go wake up her parents.  I could not be prouder!  They are even teaching Sadie to take the juice to Mackenzie.  I'm so happy with how they are all progressing!  

Above: A compilation of clips over the course of Sadie's training - from imprinting the litter at birth through live alerting my classmates at 8 months.  

Below:  Sadie learning to retrieve the meter and juice.  The meter is what Mackenzie checks her blood sugar with, and the juice is how Mackenzie fixes a low.  This way if at any point Mackenzie is so low that she cannot function and needs sugar immediately, Sadie can retrieve the juice so Mackenzie can bring her sugar up as quickly as possible.  

Mackenzie and her family came to pick up Sadie for the final time today.  They walked in the door and Sadie immediately began alerting.  The combination of happiness from seeing her girl, Mackenzie, and the alert caused Sadie's alert pawing to be more in the form of jumping, but eventually we caught on and Mackenzie checked. She was almost 400!  Good high Sadie! What a good alert to end it all.

I'm going to miss Sadie. I'll miss watching her alert to my classmates during school, I'll miss her being my copilot as I drive, I'll miss how she comes up growling and wiggling in pride when she has a toy in her mouth, and I'll miss her two paw alerts becoming full body hugs.  I love that dog.  But, hopefully Sadie will be another tool to help keep Mackenzie healthy, because that is her job and her purpose - to keep Mackenzie safe.  

Thank you Sadie for a fantastic 9 months spent with you!

Providence brought me my biggest challenge in the form of a telephone repairman.  Seeing my canine agility equipment and trophies, the repairman, Joe, asked if I knew about Diabetic Alert Dogs (DADs) - dogs that alert to high and low blood sugar. While I had always wanted to train a DAD, I lacked some basics, like knowledge and a client.  Many emails later, I met with Joe and his wife, Regina. They shared with me how fear causes them to stand in the doorway each morning watching for the rise and fall of their daughter’s chest, hoping her blood sugar hadn’t plummeted during the night.  They needed help for their daughter, Mackenzie, and they were asking me for it.

Armed with the assignment of creating a DAD, I spent Christmas break immersed in blogs and websites about diabetes and alert dogs. Unfortunately, information on this subject is either incomplete or, worse, contradictory. As a result, I had to develop my own protocol. All the sources did agree that DADs need to be trained using the saliva of a diabetic; meaning I had to spend quality time with Mackenzie's spit.

We found an upcoming litter whose breeder allowed me to raise the pups in my home – what turned out to be an exhausting experience! Within 24 hours of the pups’ birth, I began imprinting them by spraying the mother’s nipples with a solution made from a low blood sugar swab of Mackenzie’s saliva. I then put the puppies on to nurse, thus associating low blood sugar scent with food. At three weeks, I began putting the swab sample in front of the pups’ noses, rewarding them with treats if they moved towards the scent, and recording which ones understood the concept.

By the time the pups were five weeks old, I had eliminated the six puppies that seemed oblivious to the training.  From the remaining three, I chose the pup with the best temperament. Over the next few months I focused on teaching the pup - now named Sadie - obedience and we played hide and seek with the low sugar samples.  As Sadie gained confidence recognizing the scent, I began to wait for her to paw the sample in frustration before rewarding her, since eventually she would need to paw the person whose blood sugar is off. To proof her training, I added distractions and moved to putting the swab on a person.  By four months, Sadie was live-alerting me if I skipped breakfast, meaning she was alerting to my blood sugar if it dropped below 80 mg/dL. I then realized this might work!  

Sadie now attends school with me and alerts to my diabetic classmates’ blood sugar extremes daily. She and I have been inseparable since her birth, eight months ago, but in a few weeks she will go to Mackenzie permanently. While I know that this is exactly what I trained her for, and that her presence will extend Mackenzie’s life, I can’t help but feel that I am losing my best friend.

For the last three weeks Sadie's training has been more of "maintenance training".  I was foster training a puppy (also named Sadie) for three weeks, and it was difficult to train both, so the baby Sadie that I was foster training got most of the attention.   Big Sadie and I did go out a few times to work on public access though, and she did great, as usual.

Recently, she was in a photo shoot.  I was part of a program called Youth Salute, and basically if you qualify you go in and they take pictures of you and you put your favorite pictures on a panel along with a biography of you and your plans for college.  You're supposed to bring props that describe you and your life. I brought Elliott, my Border Collie, and Sadie.  Sadie was a charmer during the photo shoot!  The photographer loved her and thought she was the most well behaved thing in the whole world (mind you she was comparing Sadie to her rat terrier and min pin).  I put a few pictures from the photo shoot at the bottom of the page.

About a week or two ago we noticed that Sadie was going to the bathroom quite a bit, and she seemed a bit off.  Mackenzie was with us at the time, and she went low and Sadie didn't notice.  So, we made it pretty obvious that she was low, but Sadie didn't recognize it.  Mackenzie put her hands out for Sadie to smell, breathed on Sadie, spit on her hands even, but Sadie didn't care - instead she just laid down.  Eventually, Sadie did alert, but it was very unusual for her to take that long.  Mackenzie was going to take Sadie home for two nights and they said they would take her to their vet and get her checked out.  It turns out that she had a urinary tract infection (UTI).  We don't know what caused it, but she got on some antibiotics and is doing much better now.  But, it just shows how dogs are animals and get sick too, and when they don't feel good they aren't going to alert.  This why D.A.D.s are just another tool in the toolbox for diabetics and they should never be completely depended on.

On a different subject, for the past 3 years I have had a dog training class for kids, called Kids & Canines.  This year, I asked Mackenzie to come and work with Sadie.  This way she would be in a group setting with other kids, but it would still be constructive training and help the two bond and learn to work together.  Tomorrow is the last day of the class, but over the two weeks I've seen Mackenzie improve SO much!  It's been great!  She is now doing a good job seeing Sadie more like a partner rather than just a dog.  She's been learning to talk to Sadie and encourage her, but also to keep her standards and criteria so that Sadie doesn't take advantage of her.  I really wish the class lasted another week so we could work some more, but she's made a lot of progress. 

I'm especially glad that they made so much progress, because tomorrow Mackenzie is going to be taking Sadie for 3 weeks!  So far the longest Sadie has been with them was for 5 days.  So, this will be a really good learning experience for everyone.  They have lots of things planned during this time, so Sadie will get exposure to many different environments and activities - I think one of those will be a wedding (hopefully I'll get a picture or two to post :) ).  After the three weeks, we will meet and discuss what I need to work on with Sadie, to get her as prepared as possible for when she leaves permanently.  

Overall Sadie's been doing pretty well, I need to work some more with scent samples to build her confidence.  But she is live alerting pretty regularly on me when I don't eat breakfast or something.  I'm also working on narrowing down the criteria so that she only alerts to 80 and below.   I talked to Scott Smith, the extremely helpful D.A.D. trainer that spoke at the Cleveland conference, and he gave me a lot of good information on how I need to build her confidence on live alerting, then narrow down to the exact numbers I want.  So, I'm beginning to do that now and it's been going well.  Soon I will begin working on night alerting, just trying to catch her when she is dozing off or waking up and putting the swatch near her.   We have a lot ahead of us still, but so far it's been going well.

On Saturday (April 5), we had a day trip to Paris for Sadie.  She had her first vet appointment and got all her puppy shots.  Then we went to Mackenzie's gymnastics class, followed by going to Mackenzie's house and introducing Sadie to the new environment and all of the family - ALL of them. :).  

Sadie was a little groggy the whole day as a result of the puppy shots she received that morning.  But, she did great in all the new environments.  At gymnastics Sadie was still her usual self because the shots hadn't affected her yet.  She laid down quietly the entire time, just watching the kids.  She was bored, but was very well behaved and didn't cause any problems.  I opened a scent sample twice during our time there.  She alerted to the first one after about 2-3 minutes.  I just opened the container instead of rubbing it on my hand.  When the scent sample is just opened, it is more difficult for her to smell it.  I was happy that she alerted in the distracting environment and with the difficult scent sample.  The second time, I purposely opened the sample while she was asleep.  I opened the sample and put it in front of her nose, hoping she would recognize it.  After about 10 seconds she slowly opened her eyes and pawed the air.  Then she woke up more, sat up, and pawed the container.  Her first beginning to a "night alert"....sort of.  But, it's a start!    

We've continued to work on public access.  We don't go to too many places because she is still so young and not reliable yet.  The biggest thing we need to work on is ignoring people.  I need to teach her to focus on me the whole time regardless of all the other people around.  We went to a restaurant for the first time about a week ago.  While waiting, I put her in an "under" underneath the bench everyone sits on.  Then we walked to the table (it was a booth) and I put her under the table.  The legs of the table were covering the majority of the space below, but she found an area to lay down.  She was silent the entire time, and just slept on the floor.  

I've noticed Sadie is getting a little more hyper and as she is getting older she is getting more energy.  One option is to let her play with the other dogs and wear herself out.  But, this isn't a very constructive outlet, so while I let her do that sometimes it shouldn't be her main outlet.  Unfortunately, this means this exercise is going to have to include me, meaning I'm going to have to exercise....great.  Starting this morning, I am running with her in hopes of getting rid of the excess energy, we run/walk 2 miles.  Because it was her first time, she was rather confused.  She has done traditional "heeling" and we have gone different paces before, but it's only been for a minute or two and has never worn her out.  So, we will see how this goes and hopefully she will learn to go with my pace, and it will be a constructive outlet for her energy.

This morning, after our run, Sadie had an awesome house training break through.  I've been working on teaching her to spin when she needs to go outside.  I want her to learn that if she needs to go to the bathroom, she needs to let me know by spinning.  My theory is that this will help Mackenzie and her family when they begin taking her everywhere.  They will have to take Sadie to go to the bathroom before she goes inside a building no matter what, but I'm hoping that if Sadie has a signal to tell them she has to go outside it will be a little less stressful for everyone.  I've been making her spin before I let her go outside whenever I know she HAS to go to the bathroom.  This way she will (theoretically) learn to only spin when she needs to go outside, not when she wants to.  So, I've been working on this and this morning I was getting ready for school when she came and sat in front of me.  I was wondering what she was doing, but decided to just wait and see if she was just bored or if she had a purpose.  Then she wandered around, then came back and sat.  She then slowly turned around in a circle, I immediately praised her and opened the door so she could go outside.  She ran outside and peed immediately!  This means two things: 1) she is learning that spin means that the door gets opened and 2) that she knows to go to the bathroom outside.  Huge break through, and it gives me a lot more confidence about the 'spin' since I haven't heard of anyone else teaching it. 

Below is Sadie's training video from when she turned 13 weeks old.  Many of the things she is still learning and they aren't solid yet.  Unfortunately the camera ran out of battery for the part where I put the scent on my hand and she alerted to it, so I will have to get that on the next video.  

So this has been a really big 2 month gap since I last wrote; I'm not even sure this could be considered a 'blog' anymore - blog implies regular entries and a gap of 2 months is not a regular entry.  However, please accept my humble apologies and I will try to catch up. 

I went to a DAD training conference in Cleveland on February 1-2.  It was taught by Scott Smith, the guy who basically started DADs.  It was fantastic.  I learned so much, and it gave me so much confidence.  Every one of the 3 books written on DAD training says different things, so I was completely overwhelmed when trying to plan out my training because I didn't know which method to use.  But, this conference gave me so much information and clarity on what I needed to do, all the methods made sense and were easy to understand.  The first day was when all the information was thrown at us, then the next day was when we got to see DAD teams work on the skills needed on a day to day basis - things like telling people their dog can't be pet, sending your dog to their "place", leave it, calling past a distraction, etc.  I had learned so much and I was totally exhausted after the weekend.  But, this conference was priceless to me, because it gave me a sense of direction and confidence.  Also, Scott said I could email or call him with questions if I had any.  This gave us such a sense of security knowing that I could ask somebody who knew what they were doing.  

Ok, so last time I wrote I said we found our Sadie, well.......just kidding!  After a few more days of examining Sadie (Reff), we realized she was just too independant and she didn't care about people and what they wanted.  This is not a good temperament for a dog that has to constantly be trying to obey and please their human.  So, I went to my second option - Jackie. Jackie had been a barky pup, making me a little cautious about her and causing me to originally not choose her.   But, I knew that too independent of a dog would be a large problem as well, so I decided to ask someone for advice about the issue.  I emailed Scott Smith and asked him which pup he would suggest - the one who could find the scent immediately but was independent, or the pup who barked, wasn't as good at finding the scent swatch, but loved people.  Scott was extremely helpful and replied quickly telling me he would choose the one that loved people.  Having Scott's opinion really helped my confidence in this pup, so the new Sadie became Jackie - Female 9. 

So, at this point there were still 9 puppies in my bathroom, and they were becoming increasingly more destructive, noisy, messy, stinky, and just miserable in general.  Don't get me wrong, they were cute and stuff, but they were a pain!  I walked in my bathroom one day and found they had begun chewing on my wall with the nice Victorian wall paper - well this didn't go over so well with my mother, so we called Kathy and justmentioned that if she by any chance wanted to take the pups early we would not mind at all!   Thankfully, she came and got all but two pups, and it was glorious!  I kept Sadie and one other pup, Marlie, they were both going to be trained (Marlie for 12 days as a pet).  I've always said I only train one pup at a time, but since I had just gotten rid of 7, two was not problem!  For those 12 days we worked on basic obedience - sit, down, heel, stay, come, and kennel; as well as manners such as no biting, no jumping, no barking, no getting on furniture, etc.  They did well, but just as I had remembered, it was difficult because they enjoyed each other so much they didn't have the need to please me as much.  It just took a lot more time and work, focusing on keeping the two seperate.

Eventually I sent Marlie off to her new home in Arkansas and I could focus on Sadie. We continued to work on just obedience as this is extremely important in a service dog, but we also had to keep working on scent work.  When she was 4-5 weeks old, I just had her find a scent swatch on my floor in a container of some sort.  I used plastic containers, shoes, trophies, dominoes holders, anything I could find that would give off a different smell.  We did this for a long time, but as she got to be 8-9 weeks old it became more structured.  I would put it in a container and we would play the shell game - mixing up the boxes.  She got to be pretty good at this, walking around sniffing each box until she found the correct one.  Sadie naturally uses her paws, so at just 7 weeks old she naturally began putting her paw on the swatch or container the swatch was in - hooray!  This was fantastic because she did it herself and I didn't have to teach her.  But, this also means that she uses her paws for other things and now I will have to teach her not to since it is only used for her alert.  We are still trying to work on this, but it's difficult because I can't punish her for using her paws for other things, because she will stop using them to alert and I can't give her what she wants because it will encourage it, so I will have to just ignore it and it will hopefully teach her that it is useless to try.  But, it's confusing to her because pawing is the way that she gets the giant low party too.  

When Sadie got to be about 11 weeks old, I started putting the scent swatch on my body rather than in a container.  I noticed that her cue to find the scent was when there were boxes on the ground.  This obviously won't do unless Mackenzie turns into a box when she goes high or low - very unlikely - so I figured we should try scent work without boxes.  I first just put it in my fist down at her level until she recognized it - no problem.  She pawed my hand and caught on right away.  I put it between my toes, fingers, in my hand, and any other places that were obvious and at her level.  But, the hardest part is getting her to notice it when she isn't watching me hide the scent swatch.  This is difficult for multiple reasons.  The first being because I can't tell if she isn't responding or whether she just doesn't smell the swatch, this would be so much easier if I could smell low BG!  The second reason is because she is a puppy, and she a lot of times enjoys chewing on bones or playing more that alerting to the scent.  So, this is the stage that we are at now, putting a scent swatch on our body, and waiting until she notices and paws us.  I still try to do boxes too, just to reinforce it as well as keep her sharp for when I put normal BG swatches in the boxes.  

She has started public access now, we go about once a week to new places.  We have gone to banks, grocery stores, the airport, bookstores, the post office, and the mall.  She has been a charmer at each one!  We go outside often, just to be absolutely sure we won't have an embarassment, but she is great.  When I stop she sits immediately, then after a minute she will lay down, and she will eventually fall asleep next to me.  We have our fair share of things to work through - mainly not saying "Hi" to every person that walks by, but this is why she has now gone into service dog training where no one but family can pet her.  Speaking of which, I have heard many stories of people walking up and petting their service dog without asking, kids being mean to the dogs, people being rude, etc., and I'm sure we will encounter this at some point, but so far everyone has been extremely respectful and complementary.  They read the vest and even say "I know she's not allowed to be pet, but she is beautiful", or something to this effect.  I was thouroughly surprised!  The only dirty look we have gotten so far is from a woman in a bookstore who had a service dog!  Her child was reading to the dog in a corner, and we were walking away from them, about 15 feet away when the dog stood up, wanting to see Sadie.  She was not very happy with us, even though we didn't do a thing wrong, but she kept an eye on us the whole time.  But, anyways, Sadie has been a little angel on every trip and she has made us quite the celebrities - lots of "How adorable!" comments.

So, this is quite the update, but this is where we are and hopefully I will give another update soon, maybe sooner than 2 months!