Lady Priscilla completes her canine good citizen test — the AKC’s first step toward becoming a trusted public companion.
We’ll walk you through how it went. If you’re just joining her CGC training arc, start with Five Feet, Four Dogs, where her breakthrough moment in class changed everything.
It didn’t feel like a test. Not really. Not once the leash was in my hand and Lady Priscilla was walking beside me, ears high, grin wide, laser-focused and ready.
She knew.
Somehow, maybe from the word “Gainesville,” or “Jenny,” or just the shift in our energy, she knew this was the day. The big one. The moment we’d quietly, steadily been building toward since the very first day.
She handled it like a pro.
Not by being perfect.
But by being herself.
Here’s how it all unfolded — moment by moment, test item by test item.
Sit and Down on Cue, Stay in Place, and Coming When Called
We started the way we always do, just outside the door, with a quiet moment to reset. No hype, no drama. Just a Sit, a treat, a deep breath and a check-in: Are you with me? She was.
We walked in calm and collected. Jenny had a couple of chairs waiting for us just inside. Lady Priscilla got a moment to settle, scan the room, and take one last treat before we began.
First up: the basic obedience set.
Sit.
Lay (our cue for Down).
Stay.
Come when called.
The Stay and Come are supposed to include a Sit for one, Lay for the other. But Lady Priscilla, in true service dog form, had her own interpretation. She cycled quickly through the Sit each time before dropping into a Lay. Not disobedience, just her public access training kicking in. We’ve taught her to default to Settle (a form of Lay) in busy places, and today she applied that skill a little… creatively.
But she was calm. She was responsive. She was working.
And when she came to us on cue and gave a solid Sit at the end? That sealed the deal for this part of the CGC test. It counted. And it set the tone for the day: this wasn’t going to be a performance. It was going to be real.
Out for a Walk (Loose Leash Walking)
We gave her a quick moment to breathe. No treats allowed yet, just calm praise and a soft reset while Jenny explained the next section.
Same cone course we’ve practiced in class: loose leash walk with built-in left turns, right turns, and u-turns. Nothing fancy. Just smooth navigation and connection.
And Lady Priscilla? She breezed through it.
No tension, no pulling, no hesitation. Just quiet partnership. We moved together like we’ve been doing this for years… because, in a way, we have. Every sidewalk, every store, every public access training experience
had brought us closer to this. Just one small piece of the AKC Canine Good Citizen test, but a big leap for us.
It wasn’t just a walk.
It was a walk we earned.
Accepting a Friendly Stranger + Appearance and Grooming
Next up was a combined section: the friendly stranger approach and a basic grooming check.
We moved to the center of the room and settled Lady Priscilla into a down-stay on a mat Jenny had placed… not her usual mat from home, just a neutral space in a neutral room.
A friendly woman approached and asked if she could pet her. We said yes, gave the “Say Hi” cue, and I immediately knelt beside her to reinforce the experience with gentle, familiar touch.
She didn’t flinch, pull away, or overreact.
Ears? Fine.
Paws? No issue.
Brush? Easy.
She stayed calm and grounded the whole time. Cooperative, composed, completely in sync with us. If you’ve followed her journey, you know this hasn’t always been easy. It’s taken months of bi-weekly cooperative care to allow paw handling in particular. But today, she let someone new into her space — and trusted us to guide the moment.
It wasn’t just compliance. It was consent.
Walking Through a Crowd
Jenny, the woman who had petted Lady Priscilla, and a man arranged themselves in a loose circle in the middle of the room. Our job was simple: weave through and around them, keeping loose leash walking and attention through the movement
Everything started fine. Lady Priscilla effortlessly followed my lead, barely giving the new people the tiniest sniff. Then we reached the back of the circle.
That’s when she spotted the demo dog. Quiet, crated, not doing anything… but there. And that was enough for a couple of sharp protest barks. Not reactive, not aggressive, more like, “Hey, I wasn’t expecting YOU here.”
Uh-oh.
But Jenny didn’t flinch. She just gave us a nod and said, “Go ahead and circle around again.”
So we did.
And this time? Quiet.
She saw the dog again, took a beat, and chose differently.
That’s the kind of moment the test doesn’t measure on paper — but it’s exactly what CGC is all about: composure, resilience, and the ability to recover. She’d shown glimpses of this before in Dog Grad School, but today, she owned it.
Reaction to Another Dog
If you’ve been following her story, you already know that this was the one we were dreading. She did it perfectly in dry runs the last day of CGC class, but that was with classmates she had known for five weeks. Not a strange dog. Most definitely not one she had just spotted in a crate, watching her silently, and now moving headfirst in her direction.
We took our spot along the wall, facing the cones that marked the meeting path. On cue, we started walking toward the center where we would meet the demo dog and stop to exchange pleasantries with Jenny before continuing.
The approach? Smooth.
The cone arrival? Perfect.
And then… the excitement broke through.
A round of sharp barks. Not fear, not aggression, just too much joy, too much energy, too much Lady Priscilla all at once. She calmed herself down quickly, and we continued walking to the back wall. I figured that was that, and the test was over.
But then came Jenny’s voice, calm, grounded, and full of grace:
“Let’s do one more pass.”
She reminded us gently: keep her attention on you, ask her to focus, don’t let her zero in.
And she was absolutely right.
It wasn’t Lady Priscilla’s fault.
It was mine.
All the way to Gainesville, I had Jenny’s words from our final class echoing in my ears:
“You don’t have to worry about being polite to the evaluator or the volunteers. Your focus is your dog. Do whatever you need to do — petting, praise, commands, or some combination — to keep your dog calm.”
But when we got to the cone, I forgot all of that. I turned my attention to Jenny instead of Lady Priscilla.
And that’s when the barking happened.
So we reset.
This time, I kept up a quiet, steady stream of words, the kind of casual, grounding patter she’s come to know so well.
And she walked the path again.
She got through it with nary a peep.
Not perfect.
But real.
And earned.
Reaction to Distraction
We returned to the chairs near the door while Jenny explained the next part of the plan. First, she grabbed a large wooden stick, walked to the center of the room, and let it drop with a loud clatter.
Lady Priscilla didn’t flinch.
Didn’t startle.
She just… watched. Like, “Hmm. Interesting choice.”
Next, Jenny grabbed a floor sweeper and rolled it past us at a distance of about five feet.
Another idle glance.
A slight head tilt.
Zero concern.
She didn’t just tolerate the distractions. She was intrigued by them. Meanwhile, Dad being Dad, he explained to her what the floor sweeper is and what it does. That seemed to satisfy her.
Supervised Separation
Jenny took the leash. We gave Lady Priscilla a soft “See ya,” just like in class, and slipped around the corner out of sight.
No fanfare. No drama. Just trust.
Three minutes passed.
The door opened.
Lady Priscilla was waiting. Alert, composed, and visibly glad to see us. But even in that joy, she stayed grounded. No pulling. No wild greeting. She waited for the leash handoff, calm and focused, still in work mode.
And just like that… it was over.
Jenny brought us back into the room and smiled.
“She still needs some more practice around dogs. The advanced test is stricter about barking. But she’ll get there in the advanced class. For CGC, the rule is ‘not excessive.’ And hers wasn’t excessive. Congratulations.”
She handed us a beautiful blue ribbon, walked us through the title paperwork, and wished us well. Lady Priscilla had just passed the canine good citizen test, service dog official milestone #1 was now in the books, and we couldn’t have been prouder.
The whole thing — ten test items, two retries, and one unforgettable moment — took less than fifteen minutes.
But it represented over a year of work.
This was the result of a thousand small choices. Trust built meal by meal, walk by walk, heartbeat by heartbeat. Learning to listen to each other. Choosing connection over control. Saying, again and again, “We’ll try. Together.”
She wasn’t perfect today.
She was real.
And that was enough.
She passed. Not because she followed a script, but because she knew the story. And she chose to show up and put her entire heart and soul into it. Just like she does every time.
Eventually isn’t some far-off dream.
Eventually is now.
Lady Priscilla, CGC.
She earned every letter.
This wasn’t about obedience.
It was about becoming.
Lady Priscilla is already deep into CGC-Advanced and CGC-Urban, facing tighter passes, real-world distractions, and higher expectations — and she’s rising to meet every single one.
If you’re curious about the philosophy behind how we train — grounded in trust, emotional safety, and co-created growth — you’ll find it all in The Lady Priscilla Method Explained.
Lady Priscilla’s CGC was just one step. Here’s what it really takes to train a service dog for the real world. And if you’d like to follow her progress step by step, don’t miss the complete CGC Journey, where it all began.
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