Fable on recall morning – photo by Karen Fuller

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. I got a great gift today. Fable was in phase 4 on the phase report this morning. Good job little girl! She is moving along at a nice steady pace. Hopefully this will continue, through with the holidays her trainer maybe taking so days off that could affect her progress and the progress of her string. That is what happened over Thanksgiving. But since I’m tracking all the dogs on the phase report it is easy to see if the other dogs that are most likely in her string are moving along the same way she is. Just one more phase report for the year. I’m proud of Fable for making it this far and though I hope she will become a guide dog, it is more important that she be doing something that she enjoys, even if that isn’t being a guide dog.

Fable at 3 months old

Still behind on pupdates, but Fable moved on to phase 3 last week. Hoping for phase 4 tomorrow in her training to become a guide dog. Here is what they learn in phase 3:

• 3rd up-curb exercise
• dog boot intros
• preliminary obedience & guide work testing (instructor under blindfold)

I wonder how she will take to the booties? Sometimes she can be kind of body sensitive. Kind of exciting that she is doing her first blindfold test too. I wonder if this is a phase that gets many dogs career changed. I think I’ll check it out….

So I checked over the phase reports for 2015 and I learned some things. Not too surprising the largest number of career changes happen in phase 0, the medical evaluation stage. I have 28 dogs who showed up on the phase report in 0 and then were career changed. Only 12 dogs were dropped after phase 1. Then there is a big jump in phase 2 and phase 3 with 23 dogs being cc’d in each of these phases. Phase 4 is 15 dogs. Phase 5 jumps a bit to 18. Then in drops off to 7 dogs dropped in both phase 6 and 7. Another surprise is the number of dogs career changed in phase 8. I had down 18 dogs. Plus there could be more that I don’t know about. Of course there are final tests on phase 8 as they make sure that dogs are ready to be guide dogs before they are matched and train with their new partners for two weeks in class.

So Fable is at a critical point in her training right now. Not sure how the holidays will effect her progress. I’m sure that the trainers take at least a little time off during Christmas and New Years.

Fable’s official portrait for our wall of puppies

I’ve neglected updating on Fable’s progress in formal harness training. On this last week’s report she was in phase 2, after being in phase 1 for two weeks. This was most likely due to the Thanksgiving holiday as only a few dogs moved to the next phase last week. In phase 2 she is learning:

• Pattern training continues
• 2nd up-curb exercise
• distraction route in town
• responsible lead exercise
• food protocol continues

I finally got Fable’s official portrait picked, printed, stretched and hung on our wall. We have nine photos up there now. Some how nine seems like so much more than eight. I think some of it is that I had two rows of four photos and now I have three rows of three. It fills the wall up very differently. I put up enough nails when I started this wall above our stairs for the alphabet so it is easy to rearrange the photos as we add more puppies. I need to get on doing a photo shoot for Galaxy. She turned 7 months old this week. I’d like to have her portrait up by the time we have her going away party, not almost 7 weeks after she leaves for training.