“Ruby has continued to progress well, taking a variety of training exercises and new experiences in her stride this week.

On the training side, I work with Ruby for short periods each day on the full set of basic commands, and am extending the time she remains in the ‘sit-stay’ and ‘down-stay’ positions. I use a combination of visual and verbal signs during the training sessions, which is important as some clients may not be able to use hand signals and so would rely on verbal commands only.

I know that Ruby has grasped the verbal instruction approach as, when talking to my mother on loudspeaker on the telephone, she gave the instruction “Ruby. Down.” and Ruby immediately hit the deck!

In my monthly one-to-one with our Dogs for the Disabled Puppy Co-ordinator, Claire, we agreed that whilst Ruby’s response to the basic commands has been very positive, her heel-work needed a bit more focus.

So Claire, Ruby and I travelled to Banbury’s retail park. Surrounded by the throng of daily shoppers and, amongst a continuous flow of distractions (including the rabbits in the pet store), we calmly walked to and fro with Ruby, working on her walking to heel.

The training approach with positive reinforcement means that I verbally praise Ruby when she’s walking in the correct position, and, if she starts to pull ahead, I stop walking, entice (not pull) her back to my left side through my voice and a small treat, then set off again. With Claire and me taking turns, within 10 minutes Ruby was beginning to ignore the distractions around her.

Later in the week, I visited Banbury town centre and took Ruby with me to the bank, around WH Smith and to Marks & Spencer, where I gave her the experience of taking the lift up one floor, walked around, then took the lift back down to the ground floor. Ruby was very relaxed and the movement of the lift did not appear to concern her at all, with her focus remaining on me. A very good sign as this type of daily activity and calm response needs to be familiar to Ruby for when she is partnered with a client.

At the weekend we attended a Vet’s Open Day to help promote the work of the charity, and there was a crowd of about 50 people. Previously, she had a tendency to launch herself forwards in excitement on meeting new people. The Open Day gave me the chance to work with Ruby on her greeting behaviour, and, by the end, she was anticipating the praise that she would receive for sitting before meeting a new person. So, real progress with Ruby, and the charity also signed-up some much-needed local Temporary Boarders who volunteer to help out by homing dogs for short periods of time.”