The Brownies Love Emmy!

I had a call on Monday – a nice lady who had been trying to get in touch for several days (while we were in SC). She has a Brownie troop (6 & 7 year olds) and wanted me to come talk about Emmy and demonstrate some of the things she does for me. She wanted us to come THAT NIGHT! OMG!

I ran around getting a few things together, and got Emmy ready (wipe, give treat, clean ears, give treat, brush teeth, give treats, wipe again, give treat). Since I didn’t know exactly where I was going, I left a little early. One trip back into the house to get my directions!

We arrived early enough that I could “business” Emmy in a relaxed manner. She performed nicely.

We went in – we had help getting in and out – carrying my few things.

Now, these were very small little girls, and Emmy must have looked like the Hound of the Baskervilles to them! They kind of cringed anytime Emmy got near them. Bless their hearts. We showed off picking up things, doing laundry, and pulling off my shoes and socks.

After all that, I made an “executive decision:” I took Emmy’s cape off so the children could come up and pet her. Emmy was a champ. The leader showed them how to introduce themselves to a dog, reminded them that they should ask me if they could pet Emmy, and then how to pet her. Emmy helped by wagging her tail a LOT and licking the backs of their hands. One little girl got down on her knees and hugged Emmy. Emmy wagged even more and rubbed her head against the child – almost knocking her over and giving her a case of giggles. The only person who didn’t come to pet Emmy was a 4 year old little boy – child of one of the leaders.

They loved Emmy, and were most impressed with the kinds of things a service dog can do for people. We had a great time. One of the leaders took lots of pictures, and will send them to me soon so I can post them through Flickr.

We had fun, and were home by 8:30pm. A long day, but a good one.

Our Magical Night with PAALS!!

We Went! We Saw! We Conquered!!

Revised (minor) @ 9:30am edt 4/27/09

We drove to Columbia SC on Thursday. I won’t go into all the craziness of packing. Suffice it to say – After all the packing, stacking, getting two of our adorable teen-aged grandsons to take the stuff down to the car and load it up . . . I left my dress and the Ol’ Curmudgeon’s suit at home, hanging in a hanging bag on the back of the bedroom door – where we found them when we returned. {{SIGH}} So the Ol’ Curmudgeon went to the ceremonies (semi-formal optional) in Friday casual. I, fortunately, had a simple black slacks and a black top with white over-embroidered scalloped neckline and sleeves and flowers. One of the volunteers said she wished she could pull “something” out of her suitcase that looked as nice. As I pointed out to the Ol’ Curmudgeon, I looked like a giant blackberry with a string around it, instead of looking like a giant blueberry with a string around it! LOLOL!

4pm KennelCare, Inc.
We napped most of the day on Friday, then gathered up Emmy and went to KennelCare. What was going on there? A giant Meet-Up with all her old doggie friends and the new puppies! There are 6 puppies in the program at the moment – and we met them. Emmy was sooo good. She met her old friends, did some doggie dancing around and sniffing of those parts we humans get embarrassed about, and generally had a wonderful time. Then all the old friends went to different corners of the room, and one by one the puppies were brought in to meet the older doggies. I can’t remember all their names. There was Katie – a little “mini-me” of Emmy! Black and with so many of the same characteristics it was uncanny! There was Caspar – a big blonde boy! He’s going to be a super-start. And he probably will top out about 80# or so when he’s grown. He’s gorgeous! Spirit was the youngest and smallest. She was a black lab, but “fuzzier” than most. So cute. She tilted her head from one side to the other so cute and made you just want to go hug her! The others, Jill and the other, were all just as cute, but were not quite as memorable to me as Katie, Spirit and Caspar. Goodness! Mostly, the doggies played with their Gentle Leaders on to reduce excitement and nipping. The doggies had a wonderful time!

The people at KennelCare were wonderful to us! Thanks to them for letting us use their “doggie daycare” playroom!

5:45pm Left KennelCare and went for a light supper. Please understand that we usually eat supper at 5pm and are on our way to beddy-bye by 8:30pm. This evening was a very late one for us. So we wandered around Columbia until we encountered Two Notch Rd, which we knew about. Went to Arby’s and got their smallest sandwich and some iced tea (milk for the Ol’ Curmudgeon).

Then back to the hotel to change into decent clothes. The Ol’ Curmudgeon looked so nice in his yellow shirt and navy pants and navy suspenders! As I said earlier, I looked like a giant blackberry with a string around my middle (my fannypack with doggie treats, poop bags, etc). We took a couple of wrong turns, but arrived at the graduation site only 10 minutes late! Thank goodness we weren’t the last to get there!

7:00 pm Graduation Ceremony, Windermere Country Club
Oh my! There was a little slide show for each of us graduating. They were set to music, and Emmy’s song was “I’ll be Your Hands and Feet.” It was a real tearjerker. There were slides of Emmy as a little pup learning to pick up items, carry things, get things. Aubrey’s was “Best Friend,” and I’ve forgotten what Yeat’s song was. Shame on me! Steph, if you would leave a comment with that song???

Erin and her family came up to talk about how Aubrey has helped their son who has Autism. Even their son spoke a few words! That was very hard for him to do, and shows how far he has come since getting Aubrey. Aubrey helps him get up, and helps him get dressed by getting his socks for him. When S. has a “meltdown,” Aubrey drapes herself over his lap and helps him feel “grounded.” This is very important for people with Autism.

Steph and Yeats went up second, and talked about facility dogs and how they help people who have strokes, brain and spine injuries, and other things that require physical therapy. Yeats has been instrumental in helping her treat patients. People have started getting up, moving their arms and legs in wider arcs, walking in the parallel bars. Yeats carries clipboards to the desk and does other things within his facility. Now, Steph is working at a senior living facility, and Yeats is helping the patients there, too.

The Ol’ Curmudgeon and I went up together for my 2 minutes of fame at the graduation. I spoke very briefly, but remembered to point out that across the US only 750 service dogs were placed each year, while there were at least 1500 to 2000 KNOWN people waiting. Some of the people aren’t even on the counted waiting lists because they weren’t yet on the lists – they were below that level! So the actual number of people needing and waiting for service dog placement probably was twice to three times the known numbers! Then I told the gathering how humbled and yet proud I am at the same time to have been the recipient of a service dog from PAALS’ first class. I told them I was able to go to the grocery alone – with Emmy. No fears of dropping cane, dropping items. She can pick them up for me! Throughout the evening, I spoke to a number of people and told them about some of the very important things Emmy has done for me.

7:30 pm Fundraising Event Drinks Served and Silent Auction Opens
The Ol’ Curmudgeon had built a couple of “dog-proof cat-boxes,” and one of them was entered into the auction. We told the people that the minimum bid must be $250 – and if other folks wanted one, the cost would be $250 each. The difference between what the supplies cost and the price we set, would be donated to PAALS. These structures are quite complicated, and take a good bit of time to build them. The material costs are high – about 50% of the price we set. We don’t charge for labor.

8:00 pm Dinner Served
It was a lovely buffet with lots of seafood, and some other things. I didn’t visit the buffet because trying to handle me and handle Emmy around a buffet full of great smells is a little much for my hands. So the Ol’ Curmudgeon went up to get food for us. I had some wine and was quite mellow.

8:30 pm Entertainment (Master Of Ceremonies & Magician- Bill Grimsley)

9:00 pm Silent Auction Closes & Live Auction Begins (provided by Holiday Auctions)
Actually, these two events were reversed. The Silent Auction closed at 9pm, but we were running a bit late, so the Live Auction began immediately, with the entertainment pushed to the end of the auction. WOW! The donations to the auction were incredible! So were the bids! At the end, Jen and Shari got on the little stage with Akira and Charlie. When Akira comes into heat again, Charlie will be mated to her. The cost for each litter is $2500. So bids went up for paying for the litter. One bid after another, pieces of bid at various levels, bids for bags of food, bids for vet care, bids for toys, bids for leashes, bids for bedding – all in all, enough bids were received to pay not only for this litter, but the next 2, also!! YEAAA!

I can’t begin to add up all the bids, and I have no idea how much was received via the Silent Auction. But I do believe the evening was a success, fund-raising-wise.

Bill Grimsley (the magician) was great. The Ol’ Curmudgeon takes great joy in watching really good sleight of hand, and smiled and chuckled OUT LOUD throughout the performance! A great success. I was so happy to see him like this! I believe it was just what he needed.

Of course we stayed up late. Really late! Didn’t get to the motel until nearly midnight, and didn’t get to bed until after 1am! Needless to say, we slept in – really late (for us)! I staggered up about 7:45am, got coffee, put out pills, and Mr. Grumpy growled at me. I encouraged him to go ahead and take his meds.

He took them, then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. We left about 10am, stopped for gas, stopped for breakfast at a Waffle House down the road (I LUV their pecan waffles), and drove straight on home. We stopped for gas at our favorite station about 4 miles from home. The Ol’ Curmudgeon went for gas while I went to the grocery. By that time, Emmy was nearly hysterical with fatigue and wanting to be HOME! She behaved very well at the grocery, but I can “read” her. She just wasn’t happy. Went to the car and she leapt into the FRONT seat – she’s never done that before! I managed to get her OFF, then she leapt into the backseat before I could get her seatbelt harness on her. I had to get her OFF again, and then put the harness on her, then get her to JUMP again. Actually, that last part was the easy part. She kept shifting from foot to foot. I could hardly get the harness on her.

When we got home, I called the two teen grandsons from next door to help us unload the car. After we got the groceries in the refrigerator, we kind of napped in our chairs for a bit. Finally, we had supper about 6:30pm. Yep, we were still “off schedule.” I reckon it will take us 2-3 more days before we are settled back in our skins.

Emmy first headed for the back yard and afterward finally collapsed on her “place” in the living room. She roused long enough to eat and visit the back yard again, then went back to sleep. Have I shared with you that she SNORES??? And she also “whuffs” in her sleep! So funny!

So we spent the night with the Ol’ Curmudgeon mumbling in his sleep, and with Emmy snoring and whuffing in her sleep, and me trying to stay asleep with all that going on. Believe it or not, I did sleep. Hard! And woke up around 7am to Emmy licking my hand and wanting to go OUT – NOW!!

We made it up – drank coffee (uummm! My own coffee is soooo good!) and had our soft-boiled eggs with toast and a little grilled hog jowl. The Ol’ Curmudgeon ate ALL of his hog jowl – didn’t even give me the rinds like he usually does.

And so we are HOME! We enjoyed our trip, but we are very, VERY happy to be HOME again! The “Magical Night with PAALS” was well worth the trip to Columbia, but we are VERY happy to be HOME-SWEET-HOME!

Going on a Trip!

If the cardiologist says “ok,” the Ol’ Curmudgeon and I will drive to Columbia SC on Thursday for Emmy’s graduation ceremony on Friday. There are lots of activities planned, and it will be an exhausting time for us. I worry about the Ol’ Curmudgeon. After 31 years, I love him even more than I did when we married. Don’t want to lose him!

So we will leave on Thursday so we can rest for a day before all the events. Friday will be the Magical Night with PAALS events – graduation, silent auction, dinner, open auction. For people who tire as easily as the Ol’ Curmudgeon and I, this will be a just totally “wipe-out” evening.

On Saturday there are two fairs to choose from to attend: The Lexington Family Days or the Sparkleberry Country Fair. We’ll see how wrecked we are after Friday night.  I’m not even sure we’ll be able to get through much past the Friday night dinner.

We may need to bow out of the Saturday events. We will have the drive back to Lawrenceville either on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. We may turn around and come home on Saturday, depending on how we are doing. We have the option – we can check out a day early.

So we are packing up. Yes, already. Emmy’s grooming materials are packed in a cosmetics travel container. Just like mine are. Her blankets are being washed and will go with us. Emmy will go to the groomer at 8:30AM tomorrow, and I will continue to brush her within an inch of her life every day we are gone! I won’t pack her travel-kennel until the morning of leaving. The pad that is in it, however, won’t go with us – it needs washing, and I won’t have time to do that ahead of time. I’ll wash and take with us one of her other pads we have around the house.

Leash & cape she will wear. OOPS! have to vacuum off the back seat! Don’t forget the pooper-scooper (SASI)

We’ll need our son to load the dog-proof litter boxes we are donating to PAALS, and I need to take a few other things we are donating to them, also.

Computers, our clothes, our undies, shoes, the Ol’ Curmudgeon’s ditty-bag, my cosmetic bag. Snacks for the trip – no eating at restaurants on the way! Take bread and butter with us, too. Books to read.

I think I have thought of all we will need. Hope so!

Take It – Hold – Bring It

Well, we usually use this set of cues to have Emmy take a basket of something from one of us to the other. That is, until tonight when the Ol’ Curmudgeon found I had left my cane in the kitchen.

So he called Emmy, held out my cane and cued her to “Take it – hold – bring it.” Emmy proudly marched from the kitchen into the living room and presented it to me. She got a little “jackpot” treat (3 kibbles) for that!

Next task? “Find cane!” Once she has that down, maybe we’ll work on “find keys” and “find cell!” I’m always strewing these objects around the house then hunting for them all over the place!

Emmy is such a smart girl!

Nuclear Stress Test – Reprise

Early this morning we drove the 33 miles down to the cardiologist’s office for the Ol’ Curmudgeon’s 2nd nuclear stress test (like a treadmill test, but with drugs instead of a “real” treadmill) in 2 months. He’s been having cardiac symptoms for several weeks, now. There are a few things going on simultaneously:

• He had an angioplasty on Feb 25th
• He lost his job on March 25th – the day after the cardiologist gave him a clean bill of health to go back full time
• He is chronically dehydrated

So what’s causing the skipped beats, the runs of rapid heartrate? They cause weakness and fatigue. And, frankly, they scare the dickens out of me! We have to find out. Until this is diagnosed, the Ol’ Curmudgeon will not be able to go on with job searching – he doesn’t know what he can and cannot do!

So, the three of us went to the cardiologist’s office for a 7:45AM nuclear stress test. Emmy was all excited about going somewhere, but the minute we walked into the office – she KNEW she was going to be bored! She gave her adolescent “Uuuuhhhh Oooooohhhh!” with a deep sigh and went “under” my chair. She promptly fell asleep – as I explained to the people there, she was “thinking her little doggie thoughts and dreaming her little doggie dreams.” She slept and slept for 3 solid hours while the Ol’ Curmudgeon went in and came out again several times.

He admitted that during the test his heart “went crazy.” So at least the doc will have some interesting things to look at. Hope we hear from him soon.

When it was all over, we got ready to go. I woke Emmy up and she appeared from under the chair – startling some people who had just come in. [LOLOL!!]

Emmy did not do anything spectacular – she just did her job. I dropped some postcards out of a magazine (don’t you just HATE those things??) and she picked them up – they are the only paper she doesn’t try to shred. There were some ooo’s and aaaah’s for that. Then, on the way out, I was having “dropsy” – first my cane, then my cellphone as I fumbled to turn it on, then my cane once more! Emmy picked them up in turn without missing a beat!

We came home and we all took naps! I was wiped out – so was the Ol’ Curmudgeon, and Emmy just “dreamed her little doggie dreams” until we woke up!

The Circle Dance

We have not been feeling very good, so we’ve been staying close to home for the past 6 weeks or so. Except for the foray into Jury Duty, there is nothing new going on. None of the Boy Scout, Camp Fire or Girl Scout groups can schedule Emmy and me until next “troup year,” so I’ve been calling around to set up demos at local day cares and pre-k’s. Their schedules don’t fit mine at the moment, so we are just sitting.

We work on some of her behaviors each day. She’s REALLY good at “NUDGE” and “PAWS” (flipping wall switches up and down), and her basic obedience is excellent. She’s great doing her “GET IT” behaviors (“CANE,” “CELL,” “PHONE,” and general “GET IT”).

Her new behaviors are kind of exciting for me, although she seems to take them all in stride. She can remove my shoes and socks and help me get my arm out of the sleeve of my jackets / sweaters! I started her with her known commands of “TAKE IT,” “TUG,” and “BACK,” which she uses for other behaviors. They are now known as “SHOE,” “SOCK,” and “SLEEVE.” She can’t get my lace-up shoes off, of course, but she can get my Crocs off. She is so cute when she pulls my socks off – she nibbles the end of my toes until she gets the sock in her teeth, then pulls backward. If they are tight socks, she really has to put her back into it. Then, when the sock comes off, she’s always so surprised! She looks at me as if to say, “What do I do, now, Mom?” Then she shakes it out, and brings it to me! That little “shake it out” business is just hilarious.

She does the same things when getting small wet things out of the washer, or small crumpled things out of the dryer. I always get the giggles, then she goes into her little circle-dance, wriggling her butt, wagging her tail and turning circles against my legs. I have to lean against something so she doesn’t knock me down! THAT would be a disaster!

She does the “Circle Dance” every morning and each time I have left the room and return (if she doesn’t come with me). She greets me with the “Circle Dance.” She is delighted to see me and is beside herself trying to express her joy! Gee, sometimes I wish people could be as nice as doggies!

Haven’t taught her to hold my jacket / sweater so I can get it on. That will come later. But the next item on my agenda is seeing if I can teach her to pull my jacket sleeve off my arm from the backseat in the car. You know how you get overheated in the car and really need to get out of your jacket or sweater. I just need to be sure it won’t be any more dangerous than having a passenger help me. So we’ll get in the car in the garage and try that a few times and see how it works out.

And so it goes – quiet days and evenings, early bedtimes.