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| so, yet another scare involving my 3-1/2yr old and the river: my mother was out hanging laundry and didn't notice my kid had snuck out of the house behind her back - literally - she weaseled open the patio door, then walked across the deck behind my mother's back, then instead of crossing mom's sightline, saari went the other way and took the long way around the front of the house. mom only noticed something was wrong when she turned with the empty basket and saw the open door. she went into the house, saw loosey - the dough-brain - still sleeping in the livingroom and dandy doing his "something's really wrong!!!!!" (aka the "lemme out RIGHT NOW or i pee on your shoe!!!!!") dance. mom shut the door to stop him from running out and asked "what's wrong?" he barked - the belly bark, the "something's really WRONG" bark - and started clawing at the patio door, got it open while mom was still staring with her jaw on the floor asking "what the hell has gotten INTO you!?", and he bolted out followed closely by loosey. mom saw them take off around the front of the house and thought crap, they're heading to the neighbour's but then heard them barking at the lower end of the property. she went out to see what was going on and that's when she saw my daughter, about 20ft from the riverbank, lying on the ground howling at the top of her lungs while dandy was dancing frantically around her barking insanely keeping her on the ground and loosey away. to an onlooker it would've looked exactly like a frenzied pack attack on a child. mom grabbed the broom and ran over but thankfully her brain kicked in and she realized saari shouldn't even have been outside in the first place and then she could see clearly that saari wasn't hurt, just scared and outraged. she told me what happened when i got back and after i finished ranting at her - it's not like i haven't WARNED her how sneaky saari is, that's why i have freakin' locks on every portal and in and out (yes, i can lock my patio door and windows from the outside, even, so she can't get out but i can get in). we then decided that dandy already shows basic ability, so i want to train him to: a) track and find saari on command (or, okay, really anybody, just makes sense since eventually saari will grow up - maybe....! IF i let her, grrrrrr) b) sound a specific alert (ie, three short barks, or one long/one short kinda thing, not just a random bark) c) stop her, especially if she's near the river or the road. if necessary, hold her - he'd have to hold her by the wrist because clothing isn't always an option with this kid (!) and if he just tries to block her, she's more than likely to consider it a game and make the situation worse. if he knocks her down, she will get scared and it could be misinterpreted by onlookers. d) this is a bit of a stretch, esp since he HATES water, but if she has ended up in the water, i want him to help her to shore or act as a floatie until they can get somewhere he can help her out of the water or at least reduce the chance of her drowning. he would need a cue, too, so that anybody approaching can "turn him off" - it'd be terrible if worse came to worst and she ended up downriver and he tries to protect her from emergency services! our local EMS is small enough that i can actually "register" him with them so if they encounter him in a situation, they'll know what commands to use (i already checked - it's just a matter of calling Pete and he puts it on file with dispatch). i've spent days on the net - not kidding: i have dialup, sob, sob - and it looks to me like "personal protection: schutzhund" is what i'm needing. does this sound right or is there another tack i can take?
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Supreme Being
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I think a service dog would be more the way to go. That way he could always be with her even if you go to the store. I saw a documentory once (cant remember what it was called) about service dogs for for special needs kids. I believe the boy had autisim and the dog was trained to stop the boy from wandering off and if he couldnt stop him the dog would stay with him and give alert barks. THat sounds like what your daughter needs. Even if you couldnt train your dog to do that maybe you could find an organization that could train and place a dog with her.
 
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we looked into that a few months ago when she was first put on disability - she doesn't qualify because she's not autistic. they don't want you to have any other dogs in the house, either.
her main problems are impulse control and ADHD, which aren't on the list for service dogs. i, personally, believe she is on the austistic spectrum. i have asperger's, as does my oldest, and my second daughter has CAPD, which is viewed by some to also be on the austistic spectrum but it's not officially recognized as such. but because the doctors have only really seen saari at her engaging best - with the exception of the last appt, where she FINALLY revealed the other side of her character - they said she's not at all autistic.
at the last appt, she had a raging tantrum that lasted just over 2hrs, including crawling under all the chairs in the waiting room and smacking ppl's legs and undoing their shoelaces as she went past until she ended up in the corner of the room, couldn't figure out what to do (ie, TURN AROUND!) and had a howling meltdown. i dragged her out when the receptionist finally called us in and she proceeded to march up and down the hallway, yelling at the top of her lungs, and opening all the office doors to slam them shut again. she got to the end of the hall and again, seemed to be stuck - she just kept ramming her head into the corner and yelling. dr thaine asked if she has these episodes every day and i said "oh yeah - usually more than once". she asked if it's always this bad and i said "not at all - we haven't started with the spitting, biting, kicking, and throwing things". she asked if i can snap saari out of it and i said yes, but then ppl get mad at me because basically i have to shout loudly enough to scare the living hell out of her - kind of a verbal slap to the face. then she jumps, freezes, cries in a normal way (not the huge, gulping hysterical sobs she'll have been doing up to that point), and wants hugs and it's over, just like that. the dr said something is definitely really wrong but saari's verbal skills are not developed enough to be able to do diagnostic testing ("don't be surprised if there's some heavy medication in her future, though").
i met a woman at the grocery store who had her son's service dog with her - jasper was SO low energy he literally lay down and slept every time she stopped to, for example, compare labels on soup cans! he was a black lab/redbone coonhound mix and, for me, had all the personality of a wet dishcloth. i know that's not typical - she said the previous dog hadn't worked out because he was too lively and energetic and it scared her son - but it was a bit off-putting to have to climb over this 90lb dog sprawled like an accident victim across the floor to get to the mushroom soup!
i looked into training dandy as a service dog but the attitude i encountered at the local organization was very depressing - the guy i talked to acted like i was a total crackpot moron for even thinking of it and, without even meeting dandy or asking anything about him at all other than his breed, announced he'd be completely unsuitable (he's neither nor a purebred lab or a purebred golden retriever and apparently those are the ONLY breeds that could POSSIBLY be service dogs and everybody knows mixed breed dogs are totally untrainable!). kept going on an on about the years of formal training required to become a service dog trainer even though i told him i wasn't interested in a career training service dogs, i just want to keep my kid from drowning or ending up roadkill while i'm on the toilet!
even harnessing her doesn't work - first off, i can't keep her in a harness 24/7 and even when we're out and about, her size makes a harness basically unworkable - she just sits down and that's it, unless i want to drag her bodily down the sidewalk.
fencing the property is not an option - i did that the first year and the very next spring, the floes that came down the river totally destroyed the fence. my property is on a bend in the river, so ice floes get slingshot around the bend and thrown right up onto the yard. anything there aside from two VERY large trees gets scraped right off and i can't afford to replace the fencing every year. we can't fend in the top section because it's the septic bed - not good juju to drive poles down through your tile bed.
frankly, i'm just grateful we no longer live in the city apartment building we were in before we moved here - we were right on the ground floor dead next to the stairwell and the lobby is always full of unsavoury types of all ages. who knows what trouble she'd've gotten herself into already!
ETA: i found a webpage honouring a dog that was neither a lab nor a GR - was actually a doxie, of all things! - and that led me to ADI. that was a better tactic (i used the yellow pages last time - didn't have internet access at home then) and i found a site called k9assistance whom i've emailed. hopefully that will be productive.
but i think i'd still like to check out schutzhund - it looks like so much fun for both dog and ppl!
we're still waiting for the agility class - the trainer's hubbie has had some serious medical problems so she's not been running her classes for nearly a year. hopefully she'll be back up in the spring.
i know it seems like i'm throwing a lot at him - the carting was fun, but the guy who trains it (he's down in Peterborough) said Dandy wouldn't be a very good match, as he's very hyper and also because he's longer in proportion than the guy considered ideal. not by much, just a little, but it makes it harder for the dog when working on uneven, rough terrain, and because of his hyperactivity, being confined in the cart harness would be mentally stressful. he suggested trying sledding or skijoring instead, so we'll be checking that out - there's a woman does it just up the road from me.
i already know he's perfect for agility because he's been assessed, it's just a matter of waiting for the trainer. i didn't know it would take so long, though.
schutzhund looks like something we'd both find a lot of fun, as well as having more practical application than agility. that's not local, though - it's about a 2hr drive away in Claremont.
there's a trainer - a very well-respected one - who's willing to assess and evaluate Dandy and maybe give me some things to work on. he's about an hour and a half away, in Dunsford.
at this point, i'm so fed up, i'm just going to aim for as many different things as i can find he'd suit and hopefully one of them will actually happen! poor dog's not getting any younger but it's rough when i have to rely on mom to drive me places.
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Supreme Being
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I think that guy is stupid!! They do use mix breeds for service dogs! I know Canine Companion for Independence uses lab/golden crosses not to mention the golden doodles and labradoodles. I have even seen shepherd lab mixes being used as guide dogs. I guess schutzhund will have to be what you use then.
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Supreme Being
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| Try finding an SAR group in your area to train with. They focus on tracking and may be willing to help you. The trouble here with SCH is that it is NOT a practical training program, the point to SCH style track is not to find people, but rather to display the trainability of the dog. A SCH dog is trained to 'step track' very precisely and over relatively short distances. You need a dog that will use all it's faculties and search, not just track in a 'just so' manner. SAR. 
Terry B
America is a large friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. - Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)
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I could only skim through this since I have work in 30 minutes, but it sounds like rainsmom is right. Your needs better suit a service dog rather than a schutzhund-trained dog. Schutzhund is more along the lines of personal protection. But I'm glad your dog sensed the danger and everything is ok!
The Cane Corso enthusiest!
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| I just saw this on "Its Me Or The Dog". They trained their dog for search and rescue. One of the dogs was a suprise to me - a Papillon. Though I am uneducated in this area, it sounds to me, if you have a wandering kid, that search and rescue might be viable situation!!!
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