Catching up with my new amazing, vibrant, young, in training service dog ZORRO.
It was time for me to retire my trix-c girl. My trainers and I found my new dog. We started training immeditaly but no one knew that he had so much energy and life in him. But, I was up for the challenge! So for 6 weeks we got to know each other. He was in intensive training with my trainer Tammy. I was ready for him to move in. because I was very sad about my girl leaving. This past tuesday, the bullet (Zorro) moved in. Dog on steroids. Lets just say it has been an eventful 4 days.
To start the bonding process nobody was allowed to handle him but me, that means his feeding and his training. We started working on sit,down,wait, side, and come. Even though he already knew these things, I had to remind him because he had never lived with a large, loud family like mine. He is doing well, considering he's only being here a few days.
In our house, we also have a maltese who thinks he's god. he snapped at zorro and zorro shook him up.
After we had that scare, we insure they are supervised, they have learned to ignore each other.
The biggest issues right now are him going crazy and his lack of personal space. We are working on civilizing him, he loves bouncing off the walls and running full speed up and down the house. He also does not know personal space, he has none whatsoever. He awkwardly jumps on my lap trying to show affection...he's gotta learn to control where he points his nose too!
He is now convinced that I am his one and only and he does not like it when other people grab him, he runs away from them.
Zorro spends most of his time in his crate, except when I am working with him. This is part of the learning process is for him to know that I am his main source of survival.
Right now we are working on learning to settle down, to do that we tether him to my sofa and put his doranda bed next to it and we reward him when he's quiet and still, this teaches him that he doesn't always need to move around, because I'm not always going to move around.. He's doing alright, it's a process.
A few days ago he finally realized that I'm the boss! It was like he was saying: "oh so I am suppoused to listen to you?!".
Yesterday, instead of training on my wheelchair, we trained on the sofa, it was our first time.
Zorro came to the realization that my wheelchair and I are not the same. That was exciting!!!
The 3 most important things I want to work on with him are; side, come, and being still/settling down.
Physically this has been a struggle, emotionally it has been a roller-coaster because it's so stressful.
I need help, and sometimes my family doesn't understand what I am doing. We are learning together.
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