- Update -

I re-named the dog Moose.

And I have gotten two conflicting stories about his training- one from the previous owners, and one from the dog.

According to the previous owners, he was advertised as a fully trained mobility dog, and when they got him he had only been trained to toilet outside and nothing else. They tried to work with him, couldn't, and eventually sent him to an obedience school who got basic sit/stay training on him, but he was having to many behavioral problems for them to keep him, just not paying any attention to commands.

As we're sitting there chatting, I start getting some red flags from the owners- two of the people in the house were treating him like a family pet, and the third person who he was supposed to be serving treated him like a pet until she wanted to use him, then expected perfect behavior.

When I was out with him the first day I started to suspect that he'd actually had advanced training, and his only problem is that he was used almost exclusively indoors.

I didn't do any 'training' at all for the first three days, but after 24 hours he had attached himself to me and started displaying the behaviors that he's fully returned to now. He positions himself with his shoulder at my knees if he knows I'm standing up, and braces to let me lean on him. He moves around to get between me and any downhill slope or things I could fall over, he'll nudge me gentle toward safer places to walk, if I leave the room for more than a minute he'll come find me. If I crouch or sit he's there ready to give me something to lean on to stand up. He heels slightly forward so that the handle on his vest is right there if you need a little help.

I've had him a little over a week, and the worst thing he does now is occasionally try to go up and say hi to someone (but he followed the 'ignore' command wonderfully today) and every once in awhile he'll throw himself down in a really nice patch of grass and roll. And he wants to go into every building if you'll let him, he'll drift hopefully toward the door. He was so happy I stopped at the gas station on our walk and he got to come in.

After a few days I started actually working with him, he responds to a handful of basic sign language (lol) and has learned or possibly just remembered the voice commands 'turn left',  'turn right', 'cross', 'cross to middle' and 'cross fast'. He's just about got left foot and right foot down, he still gets a little confused but he's figuring it out, I think maybe two more days and he'll have it.

Now, I'm amazing with animals and all, but the turnaround in him told me that there was a lot of operator error going on there.  

I'm not bad-talking his previous owners, it's really a case where they got an animal and didn't understand what it required. They've never owned or been exposed to working animals and aren't prepared or able to provide the environment they need.

A service dog cannot be treated as a family pet, and it can only belong to one person. Particularly when they are young- they got this dog at two years of age, at the point where he needed to be finished out and get the rest of his socialization and public exposure, and then proceeded to un-do all of his training through unintentional mis-use. They were playing and roughhousing with him, going out in the yard and getting him really worked up, everybody was expecting different behavior and dog just had no idea what was going on.

I used to see it with horses all the time. I'd get an animal that was supposedly un-trained and had serious behavioral issues, then find out that it was actually a master in it's trained discipline and people had managed to confuse the poor thing to the point where nobody could ride it.

So my dog who needed training actually doesn't need much of anything as far as the mobility assistance goes, and he's fine out in public, I'm not worried about taking him anywhere. He looks around, some of that is from being young and inexperienced, some of that is because he's watching the surroundings to keep his handler safe.

I'm going to get his left and right down, and a few other movement commands that I like to teach but aren't standard- I train all of my dogs to trench crawl, larger ones will have a command to get on top of an obstacle and then brace to give me a hand up, things like that.

Then we'll start working toward opening and closing doors and fetching specific items.

Oh, and due to some really weird job crap with my husband, we're probably going to be moving. Which, for logistical reasons, would require sort of this back and forth thing on my part, a week with him and a week at the house we're at now, it's just this funky situation where we'd need to be in one place for a few months and then move to another city where we'd be for a couple years, which is a few hours away from the place he needs to be right now. He's getting a hotel room on the company, but has a roommate, if he can negotiate his own room then we (kid, dog, and I) can stay with him on and off.

I have some health issues and living on my own all the time is a bad idea. Not so much because I have emergencies and need to go to the hospital or something, just because it stresses me out and when I start getting stressed it kills my immune system and I'll start actually getting sick, which makes me more stressed, etc.

But...

He's working at the beach.

It's a beach town. It's a hotel, in a beach town.

The place we'd eventually be moving to is about a 2 hour drive from the beach, if we actually lived in the city. Which we wouldn't.

I am a creature of the shore. I always have been. I used to road trip to the coast every time I could, I've managed to live places where the beach is close enough to do really easy day trips or just run out for a few hours.

Around 10 years ago life crap just went overboard and I had to move back inland, it's about six hours to the coast from here, and that's a little much if you aren't going to at least spend the night.

With any luck, next week I'll be at the beach.

Yeah, we have a kid who is in school. She's been having some stress and anxiety issues around school- not the work, that's fine, she's having issues with some of the teachers and other kids making her really uncomfortable. She's very openly gay and not religious, and it's a really rural place with lots of Southern Baptists around. Nobody has ever really directly bullied her that I know of, it's just that she doesn't really have anybody she feels like she can really connect to and be close friends with.

With the situation the way it is, and needing to travel around for the rest of the school year, we'll just do home school for now, when we figure out where we'll be living longer term she can go into school if she wants, or we'll get her into the cyber academy for the state once enrollment opens and she'll basically go through the pubic school program at home and test out of each grade like normal.

Anyway, that's what's going on right now.