Leareth shoots a look at Melody. 

:Maybe in a couple of minutes?: And Melody is going to go sit in the mismatched armchair all the way over HERE, nice and far away from possible dog drool. 

The man takes a seat at the dining table and 448 sits by him, looking around, tail occasionally going thump.

The dog, for all her hefty size, is oddly nonthreatening and friendly. 

:You can send her over now: Leareth says after about a minute, most of which time he actually spent nudging his mind into being willing to Mindtouch the old man, rather than anything about the dog per se. 

The old man snaps his fingers and 448 looks up at him. He points at Leareth and says, "Go make friends," and 448 gets up and trots over to Leareth and sniffs a few times and then plops her chin in his lap.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

This is mildly startling but Leareth has petted Huan before and so he already has an expectation that 'pet dog' is soothing and not stressful. He isn't sure if dogs all like being petted in the same way, and especially not if dogs bred in this world for support and errands will like the same kind of petting as a Maia. He tries scratching behind her ears and in the thick ruff of fur around her neck, which it turns out is oddly comforting to bury his whole hand in. 

Wagwagwagwag!

This is ADORABLE. 

Leareth sort of wants to put his entire face on 448's fur but she might not like that. Instead he pets and scritches for a while and then looks over at the dog owner. :Is there anything in particular that I should be doing to make friends?: 

"I brought a bag of treats," (448's ear twitches), "and you can put her through her standard commands and click-and-treat her for them."

:What are the standard commands?: They will presumably be in the local language but Leareth is amassing a decent vocabulary of very common words, though his grasp on the grammar is much more incomplete. 

"Uh - well, if I say them, she'll do them, can I give you a written list -"

:You can do that, it will be good for later reference, but I am not very competent at reading yet. You - could think them at me loudly without speaking out loud?:

Sure, the man can attempt to silently loudly read his checklist. 448 knows:

- attention (look at handler, be ready for further instructions)
- here (come to handler)
- give space (back off from anyone she's currently touching)
- leave it (stop investigating an object)
- drop it (put down an object)
- freeze (hold totally still, useful for vet visits)
- sit
- lie down
- wait
- up
- follow
- bring (with a noun to follow, or pointing)
- circle (patrol an area around the handler, or circle a building, and bark at anything suspicious - ideally she'd be familiar with the area around the house first or she'll find too many things suspicious)
- go time (a euphemistic command for it being appropriate to relieve herself in a particular location)

That’s actually really impressive! Leareth had expected a not-fully-trained dog to be arriving with way less existing training than that; he suspects most Velgarth dog breeds literally can’t learn to follow anywhere near that many specific and sometimes fairly complex commands. And this is presumably just the beginning! 

He writes down the commands phonetically using the Rethwellani alphabet (shared with all the other languages in the nearby region), and curiously tests out all of them except the last two, which would require him to stand up and take 448 outside. She can get a treat for everything she does correctly! 

By the end of it 448 basically WORSHIPS him. "We usually distribute the training between a bunch of different folks," explains the old man, "so they don't get too attached to anyone - this one I was a little worried, she did seem attached to her last owner, but looks like she's taking to you."

:Apparently!: There is something weird, and that should maybe be discomfiting, about being so instantly the subject of adoration, but it's hard to feel anything other than pleased about it. 

This continues to be one of the cutest things that Melody has ever seen in her entire life. You could sell tickets to it. 

:I did have some questions about further training: Melody says while Leareth is distracted scritching 448's neck fur again. :In particular, apparently this breed of dog can be useful at - being supportive with panic attacks and things like that? I'm not sure what that looks like and I'm extra not sure how you try to train it: 

"She'll figure out how to tell if a panic attack is coming on on her own, the trick is that you have to decide what you want her to do, train that as a behavior set, then assign it a temporary command till she learns to go ahead and perform the behavior on the cue of the attack itself. It can be a hand sign if it's the kind where it's hard to talk."

:That makes sense. Leareth and I will think about what would be a good behavior to train, I guess. I think most of the time he can still manage a hand sign at least, but sometimes he goes totally uncommunicative for a while - in that case, would it work if I gave the command? ...Though I guess what we actually might want is for her to come get me, before doing anything else, I wouldn't want him to be alone even with her but it'd make me feel more comfortable not checking on him so often. And we probably actually need a couple of different responses, depending on if he's outside and further from the house at the time...: 

This conversation is bizarrely easier to have while petting a dog! 

:I might want her to bring me a blanket to hide under? It helps for some reason and it would be easier than if I needed to move myself to where the blanket is:

"Bringing a blanket's a good one," nods the old man, "and getting a person, and it should work fine if someone else cues her."

:Mmm: Petpetpet. :I am thinking about what other things might be helpful. Sometimes I get...stuck, I will be trying to go into a room or get food or something and - it is not exactly that I am scared or panicking, just, sometimes being able to make decisions is broken. I am not sure if there is anything that helps consistently every time, but having some kind of gentle prompt often is helpful: 

"You might be able to train her to guess what you want and go ahead of you to it?"