This morning Ascot gave me a nice lay in, he didn’t smack me in the face until 5:30am, thats nearly an hour improvement!

After spending the dogs we all met at the van and all 3 of us headed out on a training walk together.  Arriving at a road Jean went first while me and Kevin waited in the van.  After a while the trainer returned without Jean, I wondered where she had gone and then I was told she was waiting in a cafe and I would be jointing her there.

So after a short walk we had nearly arrived at the cafe.  Just outside someone had tied up 2 dogs that lunged at Ascot, he panicked a little and lunged back and started barking.  After calming him down we headed into the cafe.  As we were attempting to settle the dogs down a lady came over and wanted to stroke the dogs.  We told her we were in the middle of training and she walked away.

As soon as the trainer left the lady came back over to stroke the dogs, a few minutes later another lady came over with her son to stroke the dogs.  A good example of just how popular guide dogs are, people just want to stroke them! We let everyone interact with the dogs in an effort to familiarise themselves with the attention.  The dogs overall behaved incredibly well.  After a while it was time for me to leave the cafe and continue our training walk.

Again as we walked down the street Ascot gained a huge amount of attention.  Everyone wanted to stroke him! It appears he is just too cute.

In the afternoon we did a short off kerb training session that didn’t take long at all.  It is a reasonably simple action and me and Ascot appeared to zoom through it.  We both may be just a little impatient!

Overall Ascot and I have done incredibly well today.  I feel like I am beginning to understand how to handle him and getting the best out of him.  There is a long way to go to get this at a consistent level as I still struggle to handle him in high distraction scenarios.

As for now its time to chill out, Ascot seems to be doing this already as he is curled up in his bed!