Crowd Control

I took Mal to the mall this morning after we dropped my daughter off at school. We did a few laps with the mall walkers and he did great! I also took the time to work on his attention to me by hanging out in one of the sitting areas and rewarding him every time he brought his attention back to me as people walked past.

Where we really had a breakthrough was with the "crowd control" task. A man stopped us to ask some questions about Mal. He apparently has an Australian Shepard also and wanted to compare notes. That was fine, so we stopped, worked on "Say Hello" so Mal could greet him, and chatted. The conversation was going a little longer than I wanted, and I started getting antsy. We have only worked on "crowd control" a few times, but as I have said, Mal is pretty in tune with my emotions and tends to naturally take care of me. He put himself between me and the man, then began to 'talk' to me. Not barking, but that "aroo-roo-roo" that if you have been around an Aussie or Husky you have heard. The man laughed and said "I guess that means he's ready to go?" I laughed, said yes, and he thanked me for stopping to chat.

This is one of the main things I want Mal for. I am not really a people person in the best of circumstances, I am much more comfortable with people in small doses. One of the main tasks for Mal is to control my anxiety and panic, and by giving me an 'out' in social situations, he is a great tool to...

a) Give me a comfortable topic in social situations. Most people like dogs and are interested in learning about Service Dog teams

b) Create a sense of security in our team. I am not out by myself, I am working with Mal.

c) If I am uneasy, he picks up on it and reacts. Knowing he is getting this concept is a big sense of security that my odds of hyperventilating because Wal-Mart is super crowded that day have gone down.

I know we have a long road until he is"trained", and that training will never really stop as long as we are a Service Dog team, but I feel like we turned a corner.