Wednesday, October 13, 2004

"Nurse"

After recently using "Go Find Grandma" combined with "Speak" to get Winston to wake up an asleep nurse, I decided to generate a new command for Winston. It is a simple one word ("Nurse") that has him enthusiastically nudge my nurse to get her attention. We practiced for one hour tonight (broken up in three minute segments with five minute breaks in between) and he did very well. He has been super excitable all day, which is why I decided to introduce the command today. We used a masking tape target on my nurses leg and only had to instruct him once or twice to "touch" it. On a few instances he got so excited that he just ran around me barking and wagging his tail...but those cases were all at the end of the three minute session. I started with standing a mere three or four feet away from my nurse and by the end of the hour I got about 20ft away from her. I am very pleased with the progress.

Today we ran errands while waiting for my flu shot and got the chance to practice "open" on new public doors. He is great though and I don't need to really encourage him. He retrieved napkins that I needed to purchase for the jewelry party and gave the cashier all of my items on the first try. Nothing new, just a nice and flawless day.

Okay, well! I need to get into bed. I'll leave you with a new photo from my Dad's house the other day!


Note: Long strain of drool from Winston's mouth