OH my doggy! I’m learning about IADW, or International Assistance Dog Week late, but I caught it just in time for the last day 🙂  This years IADW is August 2-8, 2015. Thank pawness I’ll know for next year – maybe we will do something special. Did you know there is a whole week dedicated to pups who assist their hoomans?!? How pawsome is that?!?

According to the IADW website, this week is dedicated to:

• Recognize and honor assistance dogs
• Raise awareness and educate the public about assistance dogs
• Honor puppy raisers and trainers
• Recognize heroic deeds performed by assistance dogs in our communities

This weeks dedication means alot to me and my Mommers cause I am training to be a service dog, or assistance dog for my Mommers (in addition to my therapy dog training!) And guess what, just this week, we were studying a new (to us) form of positive dog training called shaping, and I learned 2, yes 2, new tasks! A task is something that specifically mitigates a disability issue. I learned to pick up my own food bowl and bring it to Mommers AND I learned how to open a drawer by tugging on a rope that’s attached to the knob! I was even able to generalize my ninja drawer pulling skills to another drawer, and am starting to build strength on opening the dreaded heavy freezer drawer! It’s a lot of training, but I’m starting to have fun with the different things I am learning cause we play games and I get treats and lots of praise (ok, sometimes too much praise Mommers – I’m smarter than you think!)

I’m just in the beginning stages of learning tasks, so I’d like to give high paws to all my fellow assistance pups who work for their hoomans everyday and make sure they can live more normal lives and navigate society. Service dogs or assitance dogs are working dogs that deserve the most respect ever! And ‘member, pawlease be aware if a dog is working – we can be easily distracted and ask that you do not touch without asking our hoomans!

<3 MilkSDiT

p.s. I hope to pupdate soon with some fotos of me working 🙂