Milo expands his service dog skills

by Jeanette
(Northern illinois)

Milo is daughters service dog. He was taught by copying elder service dog and with my encouragement to alert of seizure in advance. And reorient her afterward. Ok that was 1 1/2 year ago. As of dec 2017 he was 3 years old.
Milo goes with daughter and I to nursing homes to be pet by the folks.

Since we got him
he has taught himself to : Non of these things were taught to him

- Help her with PTSD
- Anxiety
- Inform of low blood sugar for daughter and Mama both
- When asthma nebulizer treatment , cozy up to her
- If he hears her asthma coughing at night he wakes me up
- Same wake up Mama for other health issues
- He know s I am Mama which with the accent of a dog , he calls me mwa mwa
- She is in one aisle of a store and I in another aisle after a seizure and is weak , if she says ma ma the goes gets me . Otherwise she has independence
- Once he found a store clerk whom he didn't know and got her to go to daughter successfully
- He befriends children ,
- He learned cats can NOT be herded! Lol
- He tried to herd children but learned if he try's they won't accept it either .
- He is an alarm clock altho he doesn't recognize weekends
- He turns on the long string light in my closet next to my bed , on off on off
- He has toys and he likes to carry books gently from room to room and give them to people
-If he hears someone crying he want to nuzzle them , sympathetically
- Once while at the vet he alerted to tell me somone was going to have a seizure down the hall
So I asked and learned a dog was on seizure watch . And shortly after had a seizure.
- he likes to calmly , seriously observe handymen when they come to the house, he isn't assertive , he just stares at them , and he lets them pet him
- when someone is sick puts his head on thier collarbone and makes a humming sound
- when cats are purring likes to hum with them ' then all fall asleep
- lets neighbors child walk him on leash while I am there
- tried to rescue herd ,guard baby bunnies ,, luckily the mother moved them out of the yard ,lol
- he picks up untended art and craft supples and puts them under tables in piles, then he barks at the pile until someone notices and moves them. Daughter says why is he such a neat freak ,
- he likes when I put cardboard boxes in his play yard. He loves to tear them up . He won't do this unless I am looking . He growls at the boxes .
- likes to eat cooked veggies and fruits
- loves carbs which I won't give him often too fattening
- loves to carefully gently unmake a made up bed when no one is looking ,
- knows how to open a latched unlocked door
- one time he opened a flip top can of soup and ate it , then did the same thing with cat food cans , so all flip top cans had to be moved to a higher cabinet.
- I had to take the handles off the refrigerator because he would open it and eat
- he loves car rides
- he rode in a taxi 1 1/2 hour to a doctor for daughter
- if I take him to dog park , he tries to herd the dogs back to thier owners and he knows which is with which owner
- he also tries to line them in bunches and March them around the fence line boundary
- not all dogs like his game and some do
- if the dogpark has no dogs he marches the fence line alone seriously turning his head left and right and barking, I have no idea what he is doing . It makes him happy
- once he climbed all four feet onto a card table ,
- he at first had long silky fur and then his fur grew in shorter , like white lab only as silky as an angora rabbit
- he is also a good buddy and friend

Milo was a bottle fed pupp y that wasnin paperwork I got from the no kill shelter.
Milo was at a kill shelter and the no kill shelter rescued him . Gave him a lot of trust, confidence and obedience training . He had two family one said he grew too large. One said he didn't grow large enough . In one family there was an eight year old boy and in another family there was a 16 year old girl.

Then he came to us and I am so grateful , he wears his vest which has pockets and I put his service dog papers in the pockets.
Sometimes at the old folks home he plays with his toys and the folks toss them