Saturday 24 January Arrive and get taken around on a tour of the place, including being directed to places like the courtyard, the lounge with a small internal pub/bar, the dining room, the kitchens, etc. etc. Then have a small get together to be introduced to everyone, with each person stating their own introduction, including a bit of background information etc. etc. After that, we had a slightly more social bit of time at the pub area just chatting about technology, plans for future etc., and then went and a nice cold supper including things like cold meat, salads, mushroom bread, sousboontjies, and nice coffee afterwards. Also had another cup of coffee outside in the courtyard which is a bit of an outside smoking section since although I currently have an ashtray in my own room, I won't be smoking inside there when the dog is with me. Along the lines of that one, each person gets their own bedroom, with a bed, cupboards, and smallish desk area, and an en suite bathroom with toilet, basin and either a shower or a bath. As far as I know, we should be busy with some introductory training on Sunday the 25th, but we did already have somewhat of an introductory talk from one of the instructors at the dinner table where he told us some of the details, and we could also ask questions, make suggestions about the living areas etc. etc. Lastly, the one slightly unexpected thing so far is we don't use canes at all here since they say we don't need them when we have the dogs, and I suppose/reckon it's also a way of getting us to also focus on what we're going to do be doing here. They say even when you have the dog, you will keep the cane as backup etc., but won't really be needing/using it too much. Sunday 25 January 2009 Today we did basic command training where the instructors would hold the one end of the harness/leash, and we were taught how to issue commands for forward, back, left, right, slow down, speed up, leave it alone, sit, lie down, stand up etc., and also started on some indoor specific training where you are actually leading the dog around, and instruct it to stop in fron of every door, then go through in a couple of moves, then call it through, etc. etc., but we still hadn't met the actual dog yet since they want us to first know how we're supposed to handle it when we do. Monday 26 January 2009 Ok, first we again went through the indoors practices/techniques, and were given an actual leash and harness etc. Then we practiced on the various techniques of using the harness etc. including hand signals, footwork, voice commands etc., but with an instructor handling the harness and reacting in various ways to see how we would react, etc. etc. Then, we got to meet the actual dogs that they had finally decided to match us up with after yet another meeting today where they made a form of final decision relating to physical, and personality matchups etc., and I now met a large black labrador called Inzimam, who's apparently quite a bit larger than average, and who they reckon's personality would also match mine, and for the rest of the day, we simply sat around with our dogs with them 'checked' (tied to the base of our beds, next to their beds) in our rooms, doing what they call bonding. It also meant that for the first/last time we missed our current nightly pub hour where we just sit around and chat about the days happenings, and have a drink or two before normally fetching our dogs to come sit beside us while we eat dinner around 7PM every night. Tuesday 27th January 2009 We now started doing quite a bit of training/practice with primarily making use of just the lead to move around somewhat closed environments like indoors with our dogs since we still have to tell them to sit/stay at every door we come to before calling them to come through, and then we went to go visit the other residential house place for guide dogs SA where we also got to try out one or two things relating to the dogs toilet usage, controlling them in an environment where we didn't have such a good idea of where we were, etc. etc., and afterwards, we went and did the first real harness session with them where we walked around a part of the outside of the johannesburg zoo, trying out the basic harness usage of forward, steady, stop, sit, down, up/sit, left, right, back, etc. etc., but with the real dog there, and the idea was also to get somewhat used to planning a route, paying attention to where we were and what the doing was doing/how they were reacting. We then came home, fed them their evening meal, and took them to their run/toilet area for an hour while we went to do our pub hour, before fetching them to come sit beside the dinner table, whereafter, we take them for a final run around 9PM, and put them to bed in our rooms, while they remain checked in with the stationary chains. Wednesday 28th January 2009 Today we initially went back to the outside area of the zoo to go walk in the same area again, but a bit farther this time, and with quite a bit of rain coming down, then we went back to the alternative premises to have lunch, again let the dogs do a public toilet thing, and thereafter, we went to go do some road crossing etc. for the first time. In this section, we walked down the block crossing over three cross streets, where we now had to make sure when the dog stopped it was since we were at a crossing road, at which point, we would initially tell him to stay while we listened to traffic, then tell them to go when we thought it sounded safe enough (possibly more than once if they didn't agree with us), whereupon you would tell them to go straight over the intersection, and feel through the harness when they stepped up onto the opposite kerb. While doing this, you can also tell the dog to 'find the kerb' if you think it's coming up, and all along the route, the dog will in fact try to guide you around obstacles/blemishes in the walking path as such, and if he stops it might be for a reason, and if they go too fast, you can either tell them to be more 'steady', or tell them to stop, then start again after 'staying' for a bit. FWIW, when correcting the dogs actions you generally give the harness/leash a small jerk to make it understand you're not 100% content with it's actions, and we also use both the harness and leash at the same time so that if the harness handle drops out of your hand, you'd still have the leash to control the dog with, and if you stopped to talk to someone, you could drop the harness handle and just hold the leash as such. Will give more details to other activities like toilet business etc. later on. Thursday 29th January 2009 We started off with an introductory lecture relating to obstacle navigation where the dog in fact either automatically guides you around obstacles in your path, or sometimes notifies you that you'll need to use a small form of alternative route to bypass a larger obstacle that's blocking your whole piece of route, like a car parked across the pavement you are following along which will then make it necessary to take a short alternative piedce of route in the road itsself, whereas the others might just be smaller things like poles, trees, other pedestrians etc. If the dog doesn't go very soon it means they could still be trying to determine a good alternative route, an which case you can try various things like 'find the route', 'hup hup' etc. to try get them to carry on trying. There's also a possibility where the chosen route will in fact be blocked in which after being notified by a dog who refuses to keep on trying going forward, you'll get him to reverse, and then try an alternative route, but not 100% sure of all the details of this one. we then practiced this in the yard at the training centre with a pre-built obstacle course, including cones in the middle of the path, barriers, and one or two complete blockages in which case the dog simply points you off the pavement in a sort of 45 degree angle then stops. At this stage, if heading along with the road on your right, you put the right foot into the road, and leave the left on the pavement, and again tell the dog to go forward, but once it starts moving, you immediately keep on telling it to go left, and find the kerb repeatedly, including a right to left hand motion until it steps up onto the pavement again, and you carry on from there, prompting it with some praise for doing a good job. If you were going in the other direction, with the road on your left, you simply tell it to go forward, then immediately tell it to go right and find the kerb, repeatedly until it again steps up and carries on with the route. In both of these instances, you first try feel for the edge of the pavement/kerb before continuing, with the foot that should be nearest to it depending on the stopping angle. You also first listen to traffic etc. in case it would be better to first wait a bit as such. The other thing we did this day was handle steps approaching, where if the steps go up, the dog will climb with it's front feet onto the first step then stop, where you then feel with (preferably) your right foot the height/length of the first step, then tell it to continue, and at the top it'll just carry on walking. If the steps are going down, it'll just stop at the top of them, and then you use (I think), your left foot to feel the first step, and then tell it to continue, and follow it. The alternative is to make use of the hand rails of the staircases aToday we also had a form of refershing lecture relating to obstacles etc., and did a short practice in the yard again, then went back to the.s well, but that's up to you. In both of these cases, you can feel via the harness handle when it goes up/down, and when the stairs come to an end thereby. After this we wnent out to the real world near the alternative GDSA venue, and took a walk along the roads near this pladce, crossing some roads using the road crossing techniques, but on some of which the conditions aren't perfect which also helps us practice fine tuning our methods, but we primarily had to handle the obstacle navigation, the one other detail of which is that if you end up bumping something on the right hand side, you prompt the dog with the term 'over', and wave your hand from right to left in front of you and it, and we sometimes reversed using the heel/forward technique involving dropping the harness, and just holding the leash while reversing so that the dog can in fact turn around next to you and come back to line up with your heel, and then make it try again. If you bump something on your left with the hand holding the harness above the dog, you use the term 'right' and the rest is the same. Friday 30th January Today we did a very short practice session relating to obstacle navigation in the yard again, then went back to the alternative venue, to redo the obstacle course, again with a handler following us closely, but getting us to handle more of the specific workaround procedures as such, and we also looked more into corrective procedures like making the dog stop, and start multiple times to try control it's travelling speed better as such a couple of times, and this involves telling it to stay, but then sort of pretending you want to take a step forward, and then correcting it if it doesn't listen to the stay command and thinks it should just move forward since you pretended you wanted to, and this also fits in with the fact that even if you repeatedly tell it to go forward, it shouldn't if it thinks it's not safe enough to do so. After this, we went back to outside the zoo, and in fact did our first solo walk, with the instructors monitoring us from a distance, but not interfering with the process at all, apart from eventually telling us when to turn around and head back to the bus/van. Here we basically started off at the one end, had to walk over two access/entry roads, pass a generator, and take a form of left curve all the time following the pavement, and listening to the traffic on the one side, and when told to turn around, we came back listening/feeling for landmarks, and eventually telling the dog to find the bus as such, and all along the way, we had to carry out our own corrective procedures if we though it was necessary. We actualy carried this out in two separate groups of four people leaving around 2 minutes apart from the one person in front of us, and just going on until told to turn around, and when reaching the bus again. Seemed to go pretty well, and while my dog is pretty much trying to go pretty fast all the time, he didn't really make any major mistakes, and I only bumped two obstacles on the right very minorely, and corrected him at the time. Monday 3 February 2009 While we did some work this past weekend, I didn't get around to logging entries, but if I remember correctly, it was mostly sort of a follow up of the stuff we've already covered, practising/fine tuning the stuff we've already done. Thursday 12 February 2009 Did secondary P walk again in preparation for tomorrow's solo walk, and then after lunch, did the country walk again. monday 16 february 2009 after care visit to work/office, and informal test of the route to the nearby shops there with dog on leash, where we also popped in at all destinations there to make sure the vendors etc. know what to expect, and what their roles will be. tuesday 17 february 2009 back to work to make sure dog is comfortable there, and again a follow up on the shop route there where I now loaded various points along the way onto loadstone GPS software, and should be trying harness walk tomorrow. Also tried out/rehearsed one home route to local spar, and small pub at same centre.