Flower Drying Presentation

Feb 17th I gave a talk and led a workshop for our garden club about drying flowers. Another "go to a place you know, then do nothing like we usually do" scenario, like the job interview. Keeper adapted well. We were there for setup, and I gave the presentation/workshop. We have been there for other presentations, but it was our first time to be the center of attention.

As we were working with silica sand, I had her on a down-stay away from the work area. However, I started to get stressed by the mental demand of organizing containers, sand, flowers, people and covering the flowers with a minimum mess. Keeper broke her stay and sought me out, bumping me and reminding me to breathe. It helped. It's nice to see intelligent disobedience starting to come through while we're out and about.

We got done with our part of the meeting, and I put her in a down to go take a picture of a sample design, and she started following me. We need some more work on when she can and can't break a stay to do tasks (which was why I set up the second stay.) I took her back, reset the stay, and she held that time. She's learning and putting the puzzle pieces together.

She moved with me as needed, tucked away as needed, only broke the one stay incorrectly, and just generally made the whole thing possible. She fetched her leash, alerted to the start of the panic attack so it didn't go full scale, and provided balance support. It is so nice to have a working service dog again.

I'm giving a longer presentation, without the workshop, to another area garden club on March 2nd, so I'm glad she did so well at this one.

The lady taking photos has an amazing ability to catch me making faces and gesturing weirdly, and I won't be sharing those. She did catch a couple of Keeper and I looking nice together before the shindig started.