Fate made her maiden appearance at Bingo as a Therapy-Dog-In-Training and was stellar. She worked the room and greeted every single Bingo player, she jumped up a little once, then settled down.

Maria was astonished at how calm and responsive she was, and I’m going to bring Maria to the next training session, I think she will love knowing how to do this work with Fate. I’ll give her a few training tips.

Maria has worked well and closely with Fate, who is primarily her dog.

Fate was more restless than Red but productive. She gave every person in the room a chance to pet her, and if they weren’t interested, she seemed to sense it and walk away. She loves people,  her tail was going half the night and the Mansion aides are all over her.

Fate shows a lot of emotion, and the residents show a lot of emotion in return. She seems to love doing this work, she seems to recognize it as work.

I’ve already trained Fate to respond to my hand signals, and that proved beneficial in this work. I could point to a resident and she would follow my eyes and go up to them. She maintains close eye contact for long periods, knows who wants to see her and who doesn’t, over the hour of the game, she calmed down markedly.

I brought two rawhide chew bones for her and gave one to her every 20 minutes or so. This also calmed her down. I praised her for recognizing the people at work,  and she seemed quite proud of herself.

This is a dog who really loves to work, she paid close attention to me and was mostly completely obedient. She only blew me off for a few seconds one time because someone had dropped food on the floor.

This was a big test for Fate – Maria and I were both busy, she was in a small and crowded room for an hour. She didn’t try to get out and wander and greeted people calmly and appropriately, often sitting down next to them as they played Bingo and leaned over to pet her with one hand.

I am surprised and delighted at how natural this work is to Fate. Two months of training should be plenty.

Note: Bingo is the place where the residents will come if they need help. The residents don’t ask me for much, and if the request isn’t wise or appropriate, I say so. Most of the time it is something valid that they need. Peggie asked me if I could get her a pair of bedroom slippers (they have to have backs so the residents can’t slip out of them.

This should be a new item, I believe, it’s on the way.  Tim asked me for help in getting a new wristwatch. His is broken, and he can’t find one he likes in the local stores. It’s on the way.