Leave It, No, Leave It, Watch, Leave It Liame! Liammmmme!!!

Posted on January 21, 2009
Filed Under Class, Major Steps, Mistakes, Things That Make Me Want To Cry, Tips and Tricks | Leave a Comment

we have started switching to walking around on a flat collar. since one of the classes i have been assisting in had only a few dogs in in amanda has allowed me to train liame while the other dogs are training. this has given me the opportunity to work on not pulling on the leash and ignoring food on the ground. basically we spend our entire hour walking around food, waiting for him to look up and me and then giving him a treat from my pouch. im trying to get him to make the connection that if you want food then look at me rather than going after it like a madman while its on the floor of the supermarket. do you know how embarrassing it is to have a dog repeatedly try to eat a single piece of food off of the floor in a grocery market while you are going “leave it, no, leave it, watch, leave it liame! liammmmme” oh so embarrassing!

I Cannot Fail

Posted on January 15, 2009
Filed Under Care, Major Steps, Things That Make Me Smile, Todays Mood | 1 Comment

so i had my second day of assisting classes yesterday. i live for these dog training classes, especially the older dog classes. puppies are cute and all but i want to train service dogs - a more complicated a mature doggie client. they have completely different needs than puppies. thank goodness i volunteered for these classes before i got laid off. at least now christine and amanda know that i just didnt want to help them with classes because i had nothing else better to do.

both jasper and liame seem to be adjusting to the new routine. i however, am not. i now understand how a home based business can take over ones life. i am so motivated and driven at this point that im doing nothing for myself. i think ive watch maybe 10 hours of tv since the 5th - a pretty amazing feat for someone who used to spend most of her waking moments catching up on tv programs. im looking at being laid off as an opportunity to start my own business, become my own boss and help people at the same time - something i have been wanting to to for literally years. i cannot fail. i will not fail. and hopefully i can control this obsessive compulsive tendency of mine and in the process of not failing, not get burnt out either.

Sayonara

Posted on January 5, 2009
Filed Under Firsts, Major Steps, Mitigating Symptoms, Things That Make Me Want To Cry, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment

i got to work today all excited to tell everyone that i had my fist vacation in years where i didnt spend at least half of it sick. instead i come in, settle down and got the long walk to HR. yup, i got laid off today. as you can gather from my previous posts its not like i didnt see it coming. i tried desperately to turn todays negative into a positive and went home, changed into service dog academy clothing and went to the dog park. the high it gave me worked for a couple of hours. ive been up for a while now and i think the reality of the situation is finally hitting me.

Marley and Bereavement Time For A Service Dog

Posted on December 26, 2008
Filed Under Jasper, Major Steps, Service Dog Laws, Things That Make Me Want To Cry, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment

we went to see marley and me yesterday. oh my god. before yesterday i had never done the ugly cry in a theater. it took me two weeks to read the last couple of chapters of the book because i knew what was coming. but there it was, boom, on the screen, them putting their bestest friend to sleep. oh my god. i am crying just writing this. i cant believe that sometime in the near future i am going to have to give jasper the injection that will end his life. i did the ugly cry for a dog on the screen, having to do that to jasper is going to throw me into such a deep depression that i am scared that i might not come out of it. up until recently, jasper had been at my side, 24 hours a day for three solid years. i had more contact with him than i did my husband. my husband refers to him as my “floppy eared boyfriend” and he is so right. in addition to losing the first dog i have ever owned (or been owned by), i might end up losing my job over it too. there is no “bereavement” time off for the death of a dog. and because disability law states that they have to accommodate me just like they do a wheelchair, they dont have to provide me time off because they dont do that for if you lose your wheelchair, or your crutches or your prosthetic arm. i wonder how others who have lost a service dog have dealt with this issue in an employment setting. im going to have to do some research about this. service dog academy’s employment coaching needs to cover this issue because its bound to come up sometime.

Crate Training Is Working

Posted on December 12, 2008
Filed Under Major Steps, Mistakes, Tips and Tricks | Leave a Comment

it looks like the crate training i have been doing with the alarm barking and the attention behaviors has worked wonders. i only had to use the technique for a few days and all of a sudden, liame is starting to become a model service dog when it comes to people coming into my work area. one of my coworkers came into my cube this morning and said that he actually missed his daily liame greetings. i reminded him that i know he is cute and irresistible but he is training to be a service dog and for him to greet you without me giving him permission before hand is absolutely inappropriate. he left my area sulking. i felt kind of bad for it because being a dog lover i would feel the EXACT same way (MUST GREET ALL PUPPPIES - bad mary, no donut).

today i have a review with my boss and i am scared. i had to take an anxiety pill last night to get some sleep and one this morning to just make it through. its sad that im getting the equivalent of dentist anxiety because i have to talk with my new boss for half an hour. liame is still not picking up my strange anxiety ridden behavior yet. i really need to start training him to do so.

Meeting A Hero and Trying To Become A Real Life Hero Myself

Posted on December 6, 2008
Filed Under Care, Clubs And Organizations, Firsts, Major Steps, Things That Make Me Smile | Leave a Comment

today i went to the Epilepsy Advocate conference with liame and met Greg Grunberg from Heroes, Alias and Felicity. who knew 10 years ago while watching felicity with my college friends i would eventually be able to meet one of the cast members. anyway, enough fangirling, back to the conference.

in the last couple of weeks i have decided to expand my services to helping people train all types of service dogs. i heard greg was going to be there and that it would be an intro to epilepsy. not knowing much about epilepsy or seizures except from what i had seen on episodes of House, i decided to attend to educate myself on this condition so that i could help someone train their dog to detect them. i met a number of people at the conference who were interested in my services. it was so energizing to talk to people about dog training. i now know that i was put on this earth to help others with service dogs. and although it will never make me monetarily rich, it will make me spiritually rich, the type of rich i so desperately long for.

Bowling Alley As Training Opportunity

Posted on October 26, 2008
Filed Under Clubs And Organizations, Firsts, Major Steps, Tips and Tricks | Leave a Comment

today we went bowling with the university of michigan alumni club. neil asked me to not make him go because he wasnt feeling good but i told him that i couldnt bowl without him since i needed someone to watch liame while i threw the ball. i was absolutely flabberghasted at liames behavior. he was friendly, wasnt afraid of the loud noises and (this is what was amazing to me) “stayed” as instructed while i went up to the lane, grabbed a ball and threw it down the lane. a retriever did not go after the ball, now thats a small miracle in and of itself. i guess those sessions i have been having in the parking lot with him working on his distance stays are paying off. the only real thing we had a problem with was liame stealing food wrappers off a table at his level. he has SUCH a problem with trying to eat everything in his line of sight. i need to figure out a way to be more proactive rather than reactive when it comes to this eating things off the ground, tables, chairs, etc. so as it turned out, i really didnt need neil after all. both neil and i wore our michigan shirts and as we arrived at the alley i realized that we had a u of m bandana from neils mom we could have put on liame. darn it, that would have made him an even more popular attraction at the bowling alley. i wish a few more drunk and stumbley people would have approached him, it would have turned this into one of the best training opportunities we have ever had.

The Day After

Posted on October 8, 2008
Filed Under Care, Firsts, Major Steps, Todays Mood | Leave a Comment

i picked him up yesterday evening. the way that they shaved him for his surgery made him look like a poodle. he was bald from his shoulders all the way down to his dew claws! he didnt seem too overly exited to see me but when they told me of his morphine patch it kind of made sense. i was really surprised to see only a small bandage over his morphine patch and no casts. he was walking around fine and seemed no worse than when he came in. infact, he even pulled me down the stairs to try and go smell the grass outside the building. im so glad he is OK. i cant even tell you how worried i was that he wasnt going to wake up from the anesthesia.

in all honesty, i was hoping for the cheaper surgery option and hoping that he only had bony fragments in one elbow. but as it turned out, the doctor said he was a “classic” case, with the fragments being in both. no wonder why these guys charge so much - they actually gave me the vial of what they took out of his elbows as well as a cd with arthroscopic photos of the insides of his elbows and a mpg movie of the operation!

since he cant go up and down the stairs for 3 weeks and has to be confined to a small space (essentially a crate), i bought a cheap air mattress and am now sleeping in our office next to his crate. i didnt get much sleep last night because i had to make sure he didnt pull off his pain patch, bandages or stitches out. he was pretty good about not licking/itching things so i didnt have to put on the elizabethan collar they gave me.

Pigeons Are Treat Machines!

Posted on September 28, 2008
Filed Under Care, Major Steps, Mistakes, Tips and Tricks | Leave a Comment

we went into downtown today in an attempt to try and change liames perception about birds. currently he wants to stalk, rush, and chase them which is highly inappropriate for a service dog. so today we tried to make birds into treat machines. look at a bird, mommy says treat, mommy gives treat. look at a bird, mommy says treat, mommy gives treat. look at a bird, mommy says treat, mommy gives treat. wash, rinse, repeat. one thing i didnt think of prior to this training session was that i would have to try and train the birds as well as liame. fortunately there was a man there with some flat bread feeding the birds for about half an hour so it kept them around and close enough for liame to get within a foot or two. once the guy left and the bread stopped coming, the birds decided that they werent going to put up with this big dog getting too close to them anymore. so, in summary, if you are going to try and desensitize your dog to another animal, especially a prey animal, make sure you have sufficient supplies to keep your prey around.

The Sign

Posted on September 26, 2008
Filed Under Clubs And Organizations, Major Steps, Service Dog Laws, Things That Make Me Smile | Leave a Comment

last night i took my canine studies exam. im pretty sure i passed.
i had a very interesting thing happen yesterday and today that leaves me excited about what could be. my mother in law sent me a link to googles 10 to the 100th contest where you can win money to start a business. i was instantly interested and started thinking about how money could turn this simple one person business idea into a full blow non profit with a puppy raising program, dog rescue, multiple trainers, advocacy, couseling and legal support for those who receive the dogs.
so here is where it got weird. not that i believe in fortune cookies but today i got chinese food for lunch and my fortune stated “an important business venture may soon develop for you”. i wonder could this be THE SIGN?

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