Day Three: Another Beginning

On Day Three of Team Training, we jumped right back into soundwork practice, this time exclusively with the dogs with which we were pre-matched. Soundwork training is fun and fascinating for me. Identifying a sound source is like a wonderful puzzle that the Hearing Dog team has to solve together, with communications exchanged between both team members. In the form of impromptu responses, trained behaviors, and issued commands, dog and human collaborate to achieve a goal, and that is to return both parties to the source of the sound, where a reward awaits both. The Hearing Dog's paycheck is food and praise, and I believe that dogs can and do enjoy the orienting, alerting, and localizing process so much that their dynamism and enjoyment contributes to a self-rewarding, performance-enhancing loop. So much the better if their human partner shares in that joy! What sweetness, to play together in this way!