One helpful thing we noticed about the J-Man is that he doesn’t do well in open spaces. You could have the exact same sized area outside – like a playground – and if one was enclosed by a small fence and the other was wide open, he would be much more comfortable and able to play in the one with the fence. Put him out in an open field and he historically has just wigged out. The pumpkin farm last fall was a pretty big disaster.

We have noticed recently that his ‘boundary needs’ are lessening some. If we get him walking along on the sidewalk, he tends not to stray off of it. The edges of sidewalks form their own sort of boundary – without any curbs or other ‘wall-like’ things – and that seems to make sense to him. A parking lot is a whole other matter, and not one we’ve been at all interested in testing out yet.

On a related note – his teachers took his class out to the outdoor track at school and told us later how they totally got the concept of the lane lines and boundaries of the track. They went four laps around (1 mile!). This is a group that can get pretty wild in open spaces, but the track certainly oriented them well! We have a couple of parking lots with pedestrian walkways through them up to the store. That might be our first experiment there.

Interesting thought about the handicapped tag. Joy tends to bolt too, but as she got too heavy to carry, we ended up working on simply holding her hand or wrist very securely, and even as strong as she is, it’s not something she tries to break. If she’s having a day so bad that I couldn’t get her in to the store safely (trying to remember the last time that happened!), I’m not going to want to be out and about with her at all.