Remain Calm but Bring the Dog in IMMEDIATELY...

The vet called late yesterday afternoon while I was making a grocery stop on my way home from work to give me lab results.

His thyroid is normal and his CBC is normal, but he was showing some elevated levels that indicated pancreatitis.  No worries, but she wanted me to bring him by in the "next 30 minutes" to get an additional blood test to rule out this serious ailment. 

In the words of our great president #43, George W. Bush, "Do Whut??" I was confused. When I think of pancreatitis, I think of humans and the dire illness and pain it causes. Sirius was fit as a fiddle! However, I was at a store only minutes from my home, and the vet's office is also only minutes from my home, so I collected him and brought him by. They whisked him back for a quick blood draw (he was "an angel" lol) and we waited. The blood test, CPLi, or canine pancreatic lipase immunoreactivity, came back negative. No pancreatitis for you, Sirius, but now we have a baseline and we can recheck his panels a couple of times a year and know if things slip into poor ranges.  

While we waited for the results in the empty corner lobby with windows all around, he spied one of the vet techs walking one of the dogs they have there for boarding or medical care, and he immediately went on point, staring, riveted at the dog across the parking lot. He is not to be distracted during times like this, and this is precisely the behavior that I'm trying to correct. You can call his name, make him sit, give him a treat, take his head and turn it away, etc. and he will not be shaken from his focus. I had to walk him to another area of the lobby and even then he's craning his neck and trying to get a look. 

What I need to do is to give him the reward he seeks and the satisfaction he gets from this behavior, because there is something rewarding to him, or some sort of stimulation he is looking for when he spies another dog, since he basically turns into a completely different animal and cannot be distracted. I need to train him to look to me for that reward instead. This is a natural dog training concept but it makes sense to me, though I'm no canine and the more I learn the more I realize I don't know about dogs. 

Onward and upward...