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I have said it before and I will say it again; anxiety transmits and amplifies down the length of a leash…even if your beast is not exactly the sensitive type.
I know it. I have seen it. Even with Miss Happy Go Wiggly.
If your dog is the sensitive type then the issue is even worse. It can add to the difficulty of getting through a simple walk in the park. It certainly adds to the difficulty of getting through the tests for both Canine Good Citizen and Therapy Dog International.
Test-day handlers are frequently nervous. And the dogs sense that. Even a confident dog becomes uncertain. A less confident dog can become a real handful. When ” SIT” starts to come out “Oh, please dear lord, let my dog SIT just this once”, then it is no longer a command. It is just the beginning of a long and, probably, very frustrating, negotiation.
I recognize those negotiations. I saw a few of them go down last Saturday; test day. I’ve lost many of those negotiations myself.
I lose fewer, now.
Now, I am more confident…or at least I am better able to fake it. It is a confidence game, a con, that I play with myself; not conning the beast, but conning myself out of my doubts.
Yes. I know it is Wednesday…
Until Tuesday is the name of the book written by Iraq war veteran, PTSD and traumatic brain injury sufferer, author and veterans advocate, Luis Montalvan. Tuesday is the name of his service dog, and the book is the story of the road to recovery that started just at the other end of a leash.
Montalvan appeared on David Letterman last night. The story of how he sustained injuries is chilling. If you read the book you will find it both miraculous and telling that he returned to service and continued to deploy after sustaining those injuries. That is the kind of man he is; the kind that, like many service members, seems always going into places that strike fear, not because it is easy, but because it is important; to be shaking off their own injuries for the sake of their troops, their country or the mission.
It seemed to me, as I watched last night, that Montalvan struggles to keep it all together. It was clear to me that this was not an environment well-suited to his peace of mind. I suspect that he launched himself once more into the fray for the sake of so many returning veterans. This was his stage to advocate for support for those who suffer invisible injuries. It was his stand for better access to service dogs for veterans.
Once more shaking off his own injury for the sake of his fellow servicemen.
You can see the entire interview here:
For any veteran, this is a big day in history. It is 67 years to the day from the storming of the beaches of Normandy. It is D-Day.
For myself and my colleagues, today was a pretty big day, too.
For nearly a year a group of friends and I have been working to start our own charitable organization, Veterans PetReach. Our mission is to foster, train and place a carefully selected shelter or rescue animal with a Veteran who can benefit from the presence of a companion animal.
After months of brainstorming and research and meeting with similar organizations, after mountains of state and federal paperwork, after careful search and consideration; today, we placed our first four-legged companion into the arms of a veteran.
The cat’s name is Daphne, the veterans name also begins with “D”.
This is a different kind of D-Day. The kinder, furrier kind.
Saturday I joined my dog friends at a booth promoting our chapter of Therapy Dog International, my instructor’s company, K-9 Healers, and our charitable organization, Veterans PetReach at a dog friendly event at a local winery. Truth be told, sharing a tent with several two- and four-legged friends has a lot to be said for it, even without the scenery and the good cause.
Dogs, wine, rolling hills, lush and green as far as the eye can see; can there be a better way to spend a Saturday? But for the thunder and lightning it would have been a perfect day. With weather closing in the event did not attract its usual crowds, so we closed up early, headed to a friend’s house, and let the dogs loose.
We came home muddy, exhausted and happy…both of us.
A perfect Saturday.
OK. I may not have anything worthwhile to write lately, but I do have dinner recommendations…
A brief confession first, though…I feel I must admit I am not very persnickety about expiration dates. I will eat most anything. I mean, sure, I smell the milk carton periodically and decide that maybe it’s past its prime. I have a strict rule to toss anything with fuzz on it…or slime. In general, I don’t mess with canned goods that have expanded under pressure. They go straight to the bin.
I am at an age, though, that I have come to realize a few things about food standards.
Firstly, reading the expiration dates requires that I now go find my cheaters, or call the ophthalmologist and get a prescription for bifocals. The latter simply isn’t going to happen. The former usually doesn’t happen either; at least not when it is just me.
Secondly, it hasn’t killed me so far. I have survived eating bugs and rocks in my early years. I have drunk unpasteurized milk and eaten street food in foreign countries. For a decade or more, my mayonnaise-laced sandwiches spent mornings in a brown paper bag in an un-refrigerated school locker. I am not dead yet.
I do have a few rules, though. One of them is that fish gets eaten or frozen on the day it is purchased.
Ack.
It’s been one of those days, though, where cooking dinner was looking like a “bridge too far”. I spent much of the afternoon out in the rain; trying to wear out the beast before a therapy dog visit. We had an exhausting, evening visit to a local nursing home. Then we got home just in time for me to drop my backpack, wash my hands and dial in to a conference call for work.
Dinner was very nearly yogurt, and Chees-Its, and jelly beans.
Alas, I had gone shopping today. Today, I bought fish…
…and it was fabulous!!
Now I am not knocking the yogurt/chees-it/jelly bean option (I consider it one of the perks of being a spinster), but if you happen to have a serving or two of cod, or any white fish, lying around and some fresh tomatoes, this (Roasted Cod with Bruschetta Sauce) is way better. And it is simple and healthy. Hard to beat.
(Editors Note: The author regrets that there are no photos. She was hungry.)
This morning was Dash 2′s very first obedience class…ever, I suspect. We joined the class that I had been assisting in for the last 5 weeks.
Dash 2 was brilliant.
I made rookie mistakes; proving myself to be one of those “do as I say, not as I do” instructors and re-affirming, at least in my mind, that dog training is infinitely easier when one has the foresight to leave the dog at home.
Exactly as I should have expected, Dash 2 was bold, curious and eager to make new friends, so while he has been a perfect gentleman on a leash on every previous occasion, today he pulled like a sled dog. While at home he will sit and lay down for me; in his sensory overload off the new classroom, he couldn’t focus on me at all. My good treats, which have in all previous work with him had been irresistible, were barely noticed.
But he was a love to all who met him.
He was unafraid of the new things around him; unphased by the presence of wheelchairs, linoleum floors and all the sights and smells of a nursing home. He didn’t shy away from any of the new dogs or humans, and, like every boxer I have ever known, has fallen completely in love with one of the other assistants.
And so it goes…
I spent most of Saturday morning out of the house. I left mid-morning for a quick meeting with the other officers and board members for Veterans PetReach; a meeting sandwiched between obedience classes. Although I don’t volunteer for the morning classes, everyone else does so it was easiest for me to come in early rather than try to reassemble the group after many had begun to wander off.
What else was I going to do with a Saturday morning anyway?
For a year and a half, my Saturday mornings typically started here anyway. The beast and I, being slow learners, attended several rounds of obedience classes. Even now that the beast and I are done (???) with school, I have been coming in on Saturdays, as a volunteer, for the midday class for several weeks. By that late hour, though, the guests who frequently come down to watch the training and see the dogs have returned to their floors for lunch.
The noon class is just dogs, trainers and handlers.
The noon class, as you look around, could be the basement of nearly any building in the city. Attending the earlier classes was a reminder that this was basement of a nursing home; the nursing home where my mother had lived.
My early arrival re-exposed me to wheelchairs and grey hair, to frail bodies and decaying minds; familiar friends, although unpopular, sometimes forgotten. But I haven’t forgotten them. It was actually nice to have the same conversation I have had a thousand times with Z. once again. I discovered I had missed J.’s sweet smile.
It was nice also to chat once again with aides and volunteers; many of whom knew and cared for my mother.
And it was easy to have those conversations in the basement; where the dogs take center stage, where I am comfortably removed from memories of my mother.
Life doesn’t always stay easy, though.
The combination of the weather and school break meant that Saturday’s noon class was particularly small; small enough to manage a visit to one of the nursing home floors to see how these therapy-dogs-in-training might react to the sights and smells and sounds of a long-term care facility. It just so happens we landed on my mother’s floor; the place I had come nearly every day for nearly three years, where I had sat vigil for 9 days last Fall, where my mother had taken her last ragged breath.
Stepping off the elevator I had to remind myself to breath, too.
But there would be no tears.
This is a place where people die, which is no secret, but it is a place built for the living.
It is a place where aides stop lunch service for a second or two for a hug, where old patterns resume and I was told to grab a plate and have something to eat, and where even fragile minds lapse back into old patterns.
“Ah there’s my girl! Come sit with me,” I heard from the gentleman at mom’s old table.
There was no longer a spot for me at my usual table. The nameplate on my mother’s room is one I don’t recognize, and, while many of the faces were familiar, several more were new to me.
And so it is that life goes on; even the end of life continues…
I did a lot of things right while raising my first beast from puppy-dom. The beast for all her faults is really well socialized. She has never met a person; young, old, male, female, black, white, carrying treats, not carrying treats, etc, with whom she did not want to play.
Ditto for other beasts.
While her first approach may not always be “gentle”, she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.
She is up-to-date on shots, welcomed with enthusiasm at day care, qualified as a therapy dog. She can be a real love too…occasionally.
So, yes. I did a number of things right.
That said, there are a few things I would change if I had it to do all over again; most notably in my selection of toys.
First off, I would never let her play with the rolls from toilet paper or paper towels. As much fun as it was to see the baby beast attack the cardboard tubes, it has contributed to her appetite for reading, or, more specifically, for the covers off of my paperback books.
My library, or the stack of books in the corner that has become the repository for books I have finished, has begun to look like a black market book distribution. The covers are torn off of at least 50 percent of my paperbacks. She doesn’t like the pages so much, so, fortunately, I have been able to finish the stories, but the card stock on the covers…mmmmmm.
Second on the list of banished toys is stuffed animals. The beast has come to believe that anything with a cloth cover around stuffing must be torn to shreds. Her latest stuffed animal lasted 40 minutes. Last year’s new bed was quickly “repurposed”. I just discovered a large tear in one of my throw pillows in the living room.
Another item I would prohibit from the play-list is rubber chew toys. Although I can’t be certain of it, my suspicion is that her very first pink rubber squeaky toy was just the opening act for what would lead to the demise of my favorite sandals.
I loved them so much I replaced them. The beast loved them so much she ate the replacement pair, too.
I’ve no idea where her ink pen fetish came from, but if I knew I would remove that from her toy box, too.
By the time the beast had reached her second birthday it became clear to me that the only thing safe to give a puppy to play with was something for which there was no similar non-toy item that could lead to confusion. I had actually decided that tennis balls and tennis ball material covered items were the only things I would allow as toys for, you know, the “next time”. I even began weeding non-tennis ball items out of her collection.
I thought it was the perfect solution.
And it is.
Except for a therapy dog.
For those of you not familiar with nursing homes and elderly populations; many elderly folks use walkers. Many of those folks don’t have the strength or coordination to continually lift the walker and place it a step or two further down the hall, so those walkers need to glide along smoothly.
I am sure that manufacturers have many million-dollar solutions to provide a smooth, non-scuffing glide. Most nursing homes have come up with their own, low-tech, practically free solution. They put old tennis balls on the feet of their residents’ walkers.
I knew about the tennis ball walker modification, of course, but I really didn’t think much about it…
… at least not until the beast went to go fetch one on our last therapy dog visit.
I just got off the phone after expressing some concern about the beast.
I had an early start this morning and left the beast at home after feeding her and then launching myself into the pre-dawn darkness. Coming home my friend greeted me at the door, which is to say she wandered downstairs eventually, accepted my invitation to go outside to do a little business then returned upstairs.
Hours later she had not returned to pester me, so I went looking for her. When I sat down on the bed next to her, she stood up, circled three times and laid down with her head in my lap. I got up when my legs fell asleep. The beast did not.
In the hours since then I have been running through conditions and symptoms. She ate fine. She’s drinking plenty. She has no fever; no elevated heart rate. She’s not vomiting and is in no apparent discomfort.
It doesn’t appear that she got into anything while I was gone.
We made a therapy dog visit yesterday evening, but she was full of energy and the nursing home residents did not appear strong enough to survive 50 pounds of enthusiasm if the beast was left to her own devices, so I had strict hold of her the whole time. It seems unlikely that she got into anything there.
In terms of symptoms, there was nothing to really cause worry.
She was just, you know, not bouncing off the walls, so I was just fretting over the phone to a friend and experienced dog-person; trying to determine at what point you call the vet.
I spoke too soon, though.
The beast has come to life. She bounded down the steps a few minutes ago, then in an effort to comply with my direction to go get her Kong, raced back upstairs to throw no less than four different toys down the steps at me. She now sounds like a thundering herd throwing and chasing her Kong around.
With 9 extra hours of sleep today I suspect she will keep it up for quite some time, so if you are awake at 3 am and need to chat, I fear I am your girl…
It’s mid-term week at one of the area colleges. Two months into the semester, and for many students, it will be another two months before getting to go home again for the holidays. On top of the academic pressure, for many there is work pressure, financial worry and social pressure, as well.
I look back fondly at my college years, but it wasn’t all fun and games. It was hard work, and it was, at times, quite stressful. I had the benefit of the brigade structure. I was accountable for my actions and for people in my squad every day, but other folks were accountable for my well-being, as well. Most campuses don’t have that kind of support structure, and, indeed, even where I went to school it was far from foolproof.
More than ever, though, it seems that campuses across the country are struggling to support the well-being of the many teens at-risk. The news has been plastered with stories of suicide, substance abuse, bullying… The list goes on.
The campus I went to today has a very active chapter of a national organization called Active Minds, a group that actively works to de-stigmatize mental illness and advocate for access to mental health resources. Today they were taking a mental health day; inviting the Rochester Chapter of Therapy Dog International to come down to the student union.
We arrived in force, with 8 dog and handler teams and enough slobber to go around.
For the two hours that we were there, the beast and I were surrounded by college students of every shape and size; some fearless and eager for puppy kisses, others less bold but still seemingly in need of a little unconditional love. One or two of the students came and sat with us for nearly the whole two hours, others stopped by then moved on to other dogs, still others returned again and again for one last pat or one more kiss.
The beast loved it and was loved in return. Her tail wagged for nearly two hours straight. She licked faces and wiggled for the whole crowd; circling around to make sure she didn’t miss anyone.
One young woman lingered on the edge of the crowd for the longest time; watching and gradually edging a little closer to the beast and I. At one point, I overheard her tell a friend that she’s never had a dog and she was afraid. Eventually she joined the group sitting around the beast, still watching, at first, working up the nerve. You should have seen her face when she finally sunk her fingers into some fur.
Now that is therapy!!!
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