Raven is super smart. She is also stubborn as hell. In a service dog, that is a line that needs to be straddled cautiously. She KNOWS it all. And she is super confidant. She is also a goof ball. And her spirit can’t be broken. Her tail never stops wagging. She has a zest for life. And she slobbers. Almost on cue. In an instant. She hates mandatory place work and extended down stays. She is an amazing alerter at home, and at night. Last night she woke us up for a 178 at 12:40 and a 215 at 2am.

She loves to learn new things. I don’t do enough with her in this department, but I plan on changing that. With the arrival of Astro, we have been doing a lot more “basic training”, and as we are utilizing all the dogs, they all seem to have been reinvigorated, as are Stella and I. And the more we do to keep these dogs engaged, the better.

Raven was taught early on to open a fridge and get a juice box, but we didn’t utilize that as our Great Dane watched with a lot of interest, and would try to copy it herself, going after cheese and meat. So we couldn’t leave any type of pulling toy on the handle. But now, we can go back to doing this again. After a few refreshers of tugging on the door, Raven was doing amazingly well.

I am curious as to where the left over pasta from yesterday and my last beer went…

One of the benefits of doing more training with the dogs, is they become more focused and seem to work even better/harder when we aren’t training. Good girl RayRay. Good girl.

Team Blackdogsrule