Sjiriki came on a PA trip this week! I’ve been going to a gender clinic (finally, after 4 years of being on a waitlist!) and they wanted to have a physical appointment instead of our usual virtual ones. I was expecting Sjiriki to need a lot of help/support and was looking at this mostly as a training outing, but he absolutely aced it!! He held a pretty perfect heel, waited calmly at the reception and in the waiting room, and didn’t try to greet a single person, even when waking closely past them. The appointment itself ended up being very stressful for me (I don’t want to turn this into a vent post about the state of gender healthcare, but it’s rough out there guys 💀), but Sjiriki did so good there as well. He settled well when I was calm, watched me closely when I wasn’t, and let me know whenever I needed a break. We do probably need to workshop his alerts a bit, as while he starts off with just staring at me and then nudging me, if I do not listen he will eventually escalate by yelling directly into my face, which is not ideal. On the other hand, it is a very effective way to get my stubborn ass to listen 🤷🏻
He was again on point with his heeling whenever we walked outside so I could take a break, and near the end he even started walking me to the direction of our car, very clearly signaling that we needed to go home! I’m really super super proud of my boy, of course there’s lots he still needs to learn but today very much showed me what a wonderful service dog he is capable of becoming 🩶
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#husky #servicedog #servicedogintraining #hulphond #hulphondinopleiding #forcefree
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James & Sjiriki
