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Positive Pet and Service Dog Group Classes come to Orange

May 18, 2016 by sharon Leave a Comment

UPDATE: Family Dog Manners & Obedience will begin Sunday, June 26 at 1 PM. See our Group Classes page for details.

We’re excited to announce that positive reinforcement dog training classes have come to the North Quabbin! We have secured space for our first set of classes in Orange:

Photo of an orange

No, we mean Orange, Mass., of course! Classes will be held in June, at the Orange Innovation Center, 131 West Main St., Orange, MA 01364.

We’ll be running the following classes:

  • Family Dog Manners & Obedience
  • Service Dog Foundations I
  • Puppy Kindergarten
  • Service Dog Foundations II

Find out more about each class below.

Instructor

portrait_house_smClasses are taught with enthusiasm and humor by Certified Professional Dog Trainer and Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner, Sharon Wachsler. Sharon is experienced with pet, puppy, and service dog training, uses positive methods (with dogs and people!), and has taught classes for Dakin Humane Society. All classes are kept small for lots of individual attention for you and your dog. Dogs, like people, have good days and bad days. Sharon will help your dog get to the next level, no matter which kind of day you’re having. After all, every dog has its day!

LocationOrange Innovation Center sign with orange, blue, green sign in front of large industrial cement building

Classes are indoors at OIC, held rain or shine. OIC is conveniently located right off of Route 2 and accessible by Orange-Athol community transit and FRTA. The location is wheelchair accessible.

Family Dog Manners & Obedience

Want a mannerly mutt? A polite Papillon? An obedient Old English Sheepdog?

Do you want a dog who pays attention, does what you ask, greets politely, and comes when called? This is the class for you!

This beginner family dog training class teaches your dog basic skills to make your dog a pleasure to live with. It is appropriate for dogs of any age, from elderly to adolescent. Your dog will learn…

  • SitBrown and white short-haired dog lying on a welcome mat holding a leather leash in his mouth.
  • Down
  • Attention
  • Leave it
  • Polite greetings
  • Coming when called
  • Polite leash walking
  • Wait

Family Dog Manners & Obedience is perfect for…

  • Newly adopted dogs who need some help understanding the new rules
  • Young and adolescent dogs that have hit that “difficult” phase
  • Older dogs who could use some reminders about good manners
  • Any age dog or owner who enjoys training and wants to take their teamwork to the next level

Requirements, Fees, and Schedule:

  • Health: Dog must be vaccinated and generally healthy
  • Behavior: Dog must be able to work around other dogs and people
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Course length: 6 weeks
  • Fee: $128
  • Starting date: Sunday, June 12 at 1 PM. (Can’t make this time? Contact us to request days and times that work for you. We’ll do our best to accommodate you in future class cycles.)
  • Register: HERE

Service Dog Foundations I

Are you taking your dog to the next level and beyond? Service Dog Foundations is for dogs that have graduated from basic manners and are ready to focus on the foundation behaviors needed for an assistance dog career. Service Dog Foundations is built around handler focus — your service-dog-in-training (SDiT) focusing on you and offering eye contact, relaxed behavior, and eager working attention.

Are you training your dog as a mobility, psychiatric, medical alert, or other assistance dog? This is the class for you!

This class is designed with the needs of the owner-training service dog handler in mind. Your service-dog-in-training (SDiT) will learn to alternate between active working and active relaxation. As the course progresses, dogs will learn to maintain focus, working around increasing distractions. During “settle” periods, students will participate in discussions about common SDiT handler issues, such as how to handler questions from strangers, gear and equipment questions, and more. This class is appropriate for dogs of any age, from elderly to adolescent. Your dog will learn…

  • Eye contact and handler focusBlack Bouvier wearing black service dog harness with white and red patches
  • Conditioned relaxation (chill out in any environment)
  • Working Dog Walk (advanced/focused leash walking)
  • Leave it
  • Touch (nose targeting)
  • Stay
  • Around (avoiding obstacles and increasing team communication)
  • Public access training foundations
  • BONUS: Q&A on service dog joys and challenges

Service Dog Foundations I is perfect for…

  • SDiTs that can perform cued behaviors reliably at home but not as well in other spaces
  • SDiTs that have some, but not all, the foundation behaviors they need
  • SDiT teams that want to build their confidence and teamwork together
  • SDiT handlers that want the information and support of a service dog group class

Requirements, Fees, and Schedule:

  • Health: Dog must be vaccinated and generally healthy
  • Behavior: Dog must be able to work around other dogs and people
  • Prerequisites: Family Dog Manners & Obedience or equivalent*.
  • Course length: 6 weeks
  • Fee: $128**
  • Starting date: Date and time to be determined. Contact us to request days and times that work for you. We’ll do our best to accommodate those we hear from first.
  • Register: HERE

*Equivalent means that your dog can reliably perform most of the behaviors taught in Family Dog Manners & Obedience in a group class environment. If your dog has had previous private or group lessons, please contact us to discuss which class is most appropriate for your dog. We may ask to speak with your previous trainer, send us video, or do a consultation.

**We offer discounts to service-dog handlers who are low income and disabled. Please contact us for information.

Stay Tuned….

We will eventually also be offering

  • Puppy Kindergarten (for pups 8-16 weeks old)
  • Service Dog Foundations II
  • Canine Good Citizen class

Interested in one of these courses, or another course you don’t see listed? Contact us!

Filed Under: Choosing a Dog Trainer, Events, Group dog training classes, Loose Leash Walking (Heel), Pet dog training, Puppy Socialization, Puppy training, Recall (Train Your Dog to Come when Called), Service Dog Training

Puppy Socialization for Future Service Dogs

January 7, 2016 by sharon Leave a Comment

Overview: Why Service Dogs Need Lots of Socialization

Yellow Lab with blue cape sitting calmly in a classroom environment
Picture of Future Leader Dog “Henry” courtesy of Patti Brehler

In our previous post, Puppy Socialization: Why and How to Socialize Your Puppy, we went over what you need to know to socialize your puppy. This post builds on that foundation to talk about additional socialization issues for future service dogs. (If you haven’t read that post, please read it, then come on back.)

The basics of puppy socialization are the same for all dogs who live in a human world, whether they will be pet dogs, service dogs, police dogs, or therapy dogs. However, for service dogs, there is a greater imperative for the dog to be socialized to all the possible types of environments the dog will work in as an adult. There are two reasons for this need for “super socialization” for future service dogs (FSDs):

  1. Service dogs must be in a relaxed, happy, working state of mind in distracting environments or potentially stressful situations that many pet dogs would rarely be in, or would not be expected to behave well in. In order to be able to work in these situations, dogs must be completely comfortable.
  2. The more a puppy has positive experiences with new things during the critical socialization period, the more the dog learns that new things in general are not scary or dangerous. So, exposing a puppy to lots of new things in a positive way will also help this dog, in adulthood, feel serene around new things he has never experienced before. Lots of effective, positive socialization “inoculates” a puppy to “neophobia” (fear of new things) in adulthood.

FSD Socialization Tips and Tricks

  • Make a list of all the places or things your puppy has already been exposed to. Were there people, objects, animals, or locations where she seemed nervous or overexcited? Make a plan to revisit those, starting with a less intense interaction — e.g., have your puppy further away, ask the person to be more low-key, make the sound quieter — until she’s more comfortable. Increase the intensity very slowly and make it a truly positive experience.
  • Imagine several scenarios of where you want your adult service dog to work. Make a list: What will he see, hear, feel on his way to that environment? And then in that environment? What will be moving, making noise, or smell very tempting? Make it a priority to socialize your puppy to these things.
  • Pay attention to touch, textures, and surfaces! We humans tend to notice people, places, animals, sounds, sights, but not so much the texture of the ground beneath us, but dogs pay a LOT of attention to surfaces. It’s not uncommon for a service dog to get totally distracted and unable to work when their handler walks up a flight of metal stairs, over a sewer grate, onto an escalator, or over other “weird” surfaces. My country dog was freaked out by sewer covers and white lines painted on pavement (especially at night — see next bullet point). Some good places to find diverse textures and surfaces are children’s playgrounds — when not in use! — (sand, wood chips, and the equipment itself can make a good place to play to experience height and different textures), cities (sewer grates, subway grates, pavement, cement), malls/buildings (elevators, escalators, wheelchair lifts). You can do this at home by making a game of your puppy walking on bubble wrap, or filling the bathtub with empty plastic water bottles and playing a game in there.
  • Pay attention to weather, time of day, and lighting. Make sure to sometimes take your dog out at night. If he has experience with socialization in the dark, it will seem normal to him. Also, make sure to do some trips in the snow or the rain. We often avoid training in bad weather, but if you want your dog to work in this weather, he’ll need to get used to it, too.

Special Socialization Challenges for Service Dog Owner-Trainers

  • For super friendly dogs, associate “focus on me” with exciting distractions. Remember: Your puppy does not have to interact with everything to have a positive association with it. Just being around some things and feeling happy, calm, and relaxed is good socialization. If you have a super-friendly puppy who wants to greet all people or all dogs, spend many socialization outings rewarding your puppy for happily focusing on you when you’re around dogs and people. Every once in a while, after your puppy has offered you terrific focus and control, reward that with a chance to greet a friendly person or dog, then call your puppy away for extra great food rewards, play, or affection from you.
  • Train both “settle” and “work” in exciting environments. Service dogs have two job requirements: 1. performing trained assistance or obedience skills, and 2. lying around relaxing and conserving energy when they’re not working. Most of us tend to socialize our dog well in one area and not as well in the other, so make sure you work on both.
    – To train your puppy to work around distractions, bring some really exciting treats and ask your pup for some simple behavior such as making eye contact with you, hand targeting (touching his nose to your hand), or sitting.
    – Equally important is to sometimes ask your puppy to settle away from home. Do this on walks, at a friend’s Black Bouvier in blue service dog pack lies under a table with owner sitting in a chair holding leashhouse, or at a dog-friendly store or office. Bring a mat or towel and quiet activities for both of you. Put the mat down, tell her to settle, give her a chew, and read your book or check your email. Every once in a while, quietly place a treat between her paws so that she learns that settling will be unpredictably rewarded. If she gets up, tell her to settle again. Start with five minute settles in more familiar environments and increase in time to longer periods in totally new places. When this is going well, hand the leash to a trusted friend and go out of sight for at least five minutes so your pup can settle in strange places without you, too. (I know it’s hard to imagine wanting or needing this with a service dog, but it happens more often than you might imagine.)

Are there environments you want your puppy to work in or be comfortable in, but they’re not accessible or comfortable to you? For example…

  • Children’s playgrounds can be great for introducing your puppy to strange textures, but few of them are  accessible to people in wheelchairs or with mobility limitations.
  • Many people want their adult SD to help them navigate environments (e.g., crowds, people behind them, cities at night) that currently trigger symptoms for them.
  • Rain and snow are a common hindrance for wheelchair users or people with poor balance.

If you are challenged by certain environments yourself, it is important that your puppy has some positive socialization experiences in those situations. You also want to take care not to share your negative associations with certain people or places with your puppy (more on that below). Avoiding these situations is only a good option if you think your adult dog will never need to be comfortable or work in those environments. For example, if you live in a warm climate (and plan to stay there) that almost never gets snow, and one day there is a freak blizzard. Since this dog won’t need to work in snow, you can both stay in (though it’s a great opportunity, if you’re able, to give the puppy a totally new experience!). But in most cases, you’ll want your puppy to get socialized to things that may be challenging for you. Here are a few options to consider:

  • The best course may be to hire a trainer — who uses positive methods and is experienced with puppy socialization — to take your puppy on socialization outings. (Tips on finding the right trainer.) Make a plan for what you want your puppy to be exposed to — is it a certain location, type of weather, time of day, or is it more general — “crowds” or “city noise”? Plan to have the trainer do several outings during the puppy’s critical socialization period (before 20 weeks) and then periodically over the course of the puppy’s youth (into adolescence) so that long-term positive associations can form with these environments.
  • Another good option is a trusted friend or family member who is savvy about dog body language to take your pup on outings. Ask them to take your puppy for outings in places or around people that are stressful for you.
  • When all else fails, can you fake it? Dogs learn a lot of how to feel about the world from how we act. If you are afraid of strange men, can you pretend that you just love having a conversation with the male checkout clerk at the pet store? If you are afraid of large dogs, can you act like it’s the most fun ever to walk past your neighbor’s pit bull? Can you give your puppy a delicious treat every time you see, hear, or smell the things that give you the heebie-jeebies? If you cannot actually get into the space that has the thing you want your dog to see, do, or experience, can you get close enough to train near it so that he has a good experience in its general vicinity?

Text box says But I want my dog to avoid and dislike the things I dislike!

This is a sentiment I hear often from people with PTSD who are training service dogs to help with anxiety, agoraphobia, and other related symptoms. And I get it. When I had multiple chemical sensitivity and was training my first service dog, I was appalled to discover that she loved the smell of fragrance and wanted to follow people who were heavily perfumed. However, there are several reasons you do NOT want to socialize your puppy to fear the same things you fear:

  1. If your dog makes negative associations with things (people, animals, objects) in your environment, those associations will take the form of negative emotional reactions — and their associated behavior. Dogs don’t have theoretical dislikes of things. They have intense emotional reactions. This means if  your dog doesn’t like men or people with facial hair or people in hats or crowds, he will not just calmly try to steer you away from them. He will show his dislike with fear (slinking, hiding, rolling over, panting, drooling) or aggression (barking, lunging, growling, biting). A reactive, fearful, or aggressive dog is not a service dog; it is a behavior modification project. This will mean…
  2. Your dog will be under distress. While you may be able to understand that your feelings are not necessarily rational or related to what is truly happening in the moment, your dog does not. If she becomes distressed, anxious, or fearful around the same triggers you do, she will be suffering from those states, the same as you, but she won’t have the understanding you do of why.
  3. You will not have public access with your reactive or aggressive dog, and you’ll have another set of problems. Business owners have the right to ask a person accompanied by a dog who is disruptive, aggressive, or otherwise acting unprofessionally to remove the dog. I have seen far too many owners trying to train service dogs where the dog has already bitten people or the owners have been asked to remove the dog due to aggression. This is a costly and stressful situation that is much better prevented.
  4. The most important reason: Your dog will not be able to work around these triggers — and in many other situations. The main reason people want their dog to fear, dislike, or avoid certain things is the idea that the dog will be able to alert them to these triggers or to lead them away from them. But a dog in a reactive or fearful state cannot think. (Imagine trying to take a math test while riding a roller coaster.) So your dog will not be able to perform the behaviors you need him to perform; he’ll just be freaking out. And dogs who are reactive or fearful in one situation may very easily have those emotions bleed over into other situations over time, increasing the situations in which the dog cannot think and work well.

One Step at a Time

We often have a sense of urgency and great expectations when we bring home a puppy to train as a service dog. But trying to accomplish everything at once can lead to pushing ourselves or our puppies too hard. Instead, prioritize good, basic puppy raising – socialization, handling, bite inhibition – to raise a healthy, happy, well-rounded pup. Other useful guideposts are your pup’s developmental stage, temperament, and breeding, and your household and lifestyle. Check out our other puppy training posts for more information on these topics.

Want Hands-On Help?

If you’re raising a puppy to be a future service dog, we can help. For people in Western Mass., and the North Quabbin area, we can work directly with you and your dog. If you’re out of the area, we can do service-dog specific consulting with you and your trainer to keep you on track. We also offer service dog training workshops and presentations to groups of potential owner-trainers (disability organizations, community groups, dog training facilities) and to dog trainers and other dog professionals.

Filed Under: Puppy Socialization, Puppy training, Service Dog Training

Puppy Socialization: Why and How to Socialize Your Puppy

January 4, 2016 by sharon 4 Comments

This post focuses on socialization for pet dogs. For information on socializing a future service dog puppy, please read this post through, and then read our additional post, Puppy Socialization for Future Service Dogs.

Golden retriever sniffing daffodils
Photo #1 courtesy of Patti Brehler

What Is Socialization?

Socialization is the process of teaching your puppy to be relaxed and happy in the presence of anything they might experience as adults, such as new people or dogs. You do this by making positive associations with new people, animals, sights, sounds, smells, textures, or experiences.

What Are Positive Associations?

Positive associations are those good feelings you get around people, places, or things you’ve had a good experience with. Have you ever felt yourself relax just by walking into your home or seeing a loved one? Have you ever felt yourself start to smile when you heard a certain song on the radio, smelled something cooking, or saw a scene from a movie or book — because these sensory experiences were connected to happy memories? When we are “training” dogs to have positive emotional associations, we are not training them to do anything. We are just setting them up to feel good around people, places, or things.

Face of white and brown dog with whites of eyes showing.
Photo #2

Dogs can form negative emotional associations as well. If your dog is sniffing a house plant just as you accidentally drop a metal pan and severely startle him, he may avoid plants or that area of the house for months. A client told me her dog fell into a trashcan during puppyhood. For years after, she was afraid of that trashcan. This is why it’s so important not to scold your puppy, jerk his leash, or do other unpleasant things when you’re socializing him.

[Practice your puppy body language skills with the pictures in this post. Which of these puppies look happy, like they are building positive associations, and which don’t? See discussion at bottom of post.]

Why Is Socialization Important?

Black and white puppy baring teeth at person's hand on its butt.
Photo #3

Good puppyhood socialization allows your adult dog to be relaxed and compliant at the vet or groomer (ensuringbetter health for them and less hassle for you). It will enable her to go for walks without reacting with fear or aggression to other dogs, people, or cars going past or other things that move, make noise, or look odd to dogs. It allows a future service dog to focus on work around lots of distractions.
Text box says: Did you know? For a puppy to learn to be comfortable and accepting of all different types of people, he or she must have lots of purely positive experiences with people before the age of 12 weeks? This is one reason why it’s important to start puppy training as soon as possible.

Why Prioritize Socialization during my Puppy’s First Weeks at Home?

Dogs are naturally suspicious of new things, but before 16 weeks of age — the “critical period” for socialization — puppies are in a developmental phase that makes them more able to learn that new things are okay. Having lots of positive experiences with new things during the first few months of life “inoculates” an adult dog to accept newness. However, this socialization window closes at five months (20 weeks). This means that if you got your puppy at 9 weeks old, you have less than three months to focus on socialization. Make the most of this time!

How to Socialize Your Puppy

  1. Take your puppy where puppies are welcome (feed stores, pet stores, parking lots, dog-friendly local businesses and parks, etc.). Bring great treats. Act relaxed and happy.

    shutterstock_222861379
    Photo #4
  2. Pay close attention to your puppy and her body language (see TIP below). If she’s relaxed and happy, do some training, such as “sit for a treat” to meet new people.
  3. If your puppy looks worried or overaroused (see below), calmly and happily move her away from what’s worrying or over-stimulating her, give her a treat, play a game, train, or massage her until she’s relaxed. When she’s comfortable, allow her to approach the new thing at her own pace. Once she does, treat — and then quit!
  4. Praise her and yourself for doing great and then go home. Keep socialization short & sweet!
TIP: What state is your puppy in?

Build your puppy’s confidence and resilience and support a trusting relationship by listening to what your puppy’s body language tells you about her emotional state…

Happy: Loose, open, wiggly body; relaxed ears; open mouth. Takes treats, plays, able to follow simple cues.

Worried: Rolls onto back; hides; ears back; tail tucked; paw lift; moves in slow motion. Takes treats slowly or not at all; can’t play.

Overaroused: High ears, head, and tail. Stops and stares. Or bounces, bows, or barks. Ignores you and treats or takes treats too hard (pinches fingers).

Very small fluffy white and brown puppy flattened against floor with a hand petting top of its head.
Photo #6

What types of things does my puppy need to be socialized to?

You want your puppy to be comfortable and happy around things he’ll be exposed to later in life. For all puppies, this means being comfortable with….

  • All kinds of people — all genders, ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. Dogs are naturally more likely to be afraid of men (especially men with facial hair), elderly people, and children, and anyone who looks different than the people in their family. Try to give your puppy positive experiences with a variety of people, especially people who look different from their family.
  • The things people wear and carry. Dogs often get freaked out by things like hoods, big puffy parkas, hats, sunglasses, umbrellas, canes/walkers/crutches, and things like that. If you have a summer puppy, take out the parkas and snow shovels to play with. If you have a winter puppy, bring out the sunglasses and umbrellas.
  • Dogs. Even if you don’t plan on taking your dog to daycare or dog shows, every dog has to be
    White with brown spots English Springer Spaniel puppy running with a stick in her mouth
    Photo #5 via Creative Commons by Zoe Shuttleworth

    around other dogs at the vet, the groomer, and out for walks. Your puppy does not have to play or be friends with other dogs. Good socialization can involve playing games or doing reward-based training in the presence of other dogs and puppies, too.

  • Anything else your dog is likely to see, hear, smell, or walk on: Cars (being in them and seeing them go past), cats, etc. In the country, horses, cows, tractors, chain saws, owls, gravel, mulch. In the city, flags and awnings flapping overhead, statues, police sirens, skateboards and bicycles, sewer grates, etc.

Parting Tips: Let your Puppy Set the Pace

  • Revved or scared signals often look cute — when your puppy bounces and barks or when she rolls over onto her back — but ignoring them is not good socialization and usually backfires in the long run. Puppies who learn that lower-key signals will not make scary things (including people) go away will often resort to aggression in adulthood to get their meaning across
  • If you have an adult or adolescent dog who is fearful or aggressive around people, dogs, or other new things, do not keep putting him in these situations in the hope that he’ll get socialized. A dog like this needs a behavior modification protocol designed by a trainer who uses positive methods based on science. Find a Certified Professional Dog Trainer or a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant.

    Yellow Lab puppy on the end of his leash, pulling toward something, both front paws off the ground.
    Photo #7 via Creative commons by smerikal
  • Want to do more? Check out our Puppy Socialization for Future Service Dogs post or Dr. Sophia Yin’s Checklist for Socialization for ideas of new experiences to get your pup used to.

Quiz Answers — Interpretation of Photos

We cannot know for sure what each puppy is thinking or feeling or the complete context of each picture. These are my interpretations of the brief moments in time captured in the puppy pictures in this post, intended to help you think about your own puppy’s body language when introduced to new things.

  1. Golden Retriever sniffing daffodils — Good body language for socialization: Relaxed curiosity. Exploring the flowers with relaxed body language — soft, squinty eyes, relaxed ears, body looks soft. This pup looks like she’s concentrating (wrinkles around the nose from sniffing) and engaged but not tense.
  2. Brown and white pup with person’s face above (upper left corner) — Problematic body language for socialization: Fear. Pup’s mouth is closed, ears are pinned back, whites of the eyes are showing.
  3. Black Bouvier (my own dog, Barnum) — Problematic body language for socialization: Hyperarousal. He is on his side, head whipped toward my hand, pupils dilated, teeth bared at me/my hand.
  4. Beagle — Good body language for socialization: Happy. Sitting, mouth open, ears and eyes in neutral positions/shapes, minimal facial tension.
  5. Running English Springer Spaniel — Good body language for socialization: play. Ears and tail are in neutral positions (level with body line), movements are large and open, body is very relaxed and loose.
  6. Shih Tzu being petted — Problematic body language for socialization: shut down. Pressed against the floor, not looking at the person petting her, mouth closed. To approach/pet a puppy, the puppy should look like she’s inviting contact. This puppy looks like she’s trying to disappear. (More on how to tell if a dog is enjoying being petted.)
  7. Yellow Lab on leash walk — Problematic body language for socialization: Hyperarousal. Everything about this pup says “forward motion.” Leash tight with front paws off the ground, ears forward, mouth closed, fixed gaze/eyebrow wrinkles.

NOTES: I am also not saying it is “bad” for a puppy to ever show signs of fear or hyperarousal. Every dog (and person!) has moments of fear or big excitement. But these are not the states we want a puppy to REMAIN in when we introduce them to new people, dogs, or things in the world.

Dog Body Language Resources

If you’d like to learn more about dog body language and what your dog is saying to you, check out these links. And have fun socializing your puppy!

  • Eileenanddogs Dog Body Language Posts and Videos
  • Doggone Safe – How to Speak Dog also presented on Pet Professional Guild page here.
  • Modern Dog Magazine article on dog body language with descriptive drawings

Filed Under: Dog body language, Pet dog training, Puppy Socialization, Puppy training

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"It’s just brought so much pure joy! My dog and I like each other a lot more now." -- Sam Legg with TJ
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"She has worked miracles with my dog!" -- Gail Mason with Dazzle

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