The 10th Assistance Dog Blog Carnival — Perfect!

Welcome to the Tenth Assistance Dog Blog Carnival! I’m pleased that many of the bloggers who contributed to the first #ADBC, hosted by me in October 2010, have returned, and some new bloggers have also swelled our ranks. In honor of this being the tenth carnival, I chose the theme of “Perfect 10.” Participants could write about “ten” or “perfect” or both.

ADBC #10

I’m delighted with how this issue came together. Thirteen bloggers have contributed pieces — some of them have become my new favorite assistance dog posts! Plus, because some posts were accompanied by terrific pictures, for the first time, I’m including a few pictures from some of the posts. You are in for a treat!

The Top Tens

These bloggers are all about the tens. Some looked at the last ten weeks or ten months; others made “top ten” lists, which are a lot of fun. It seems as if top ten lists naturally lend themselves to humor and celebration.

Ro of In the Center of the Roof was part of the first #ADBC, and I remember her contribution as being particularly funny. I’m so glad she’s back because Carnival Post – Top Ten is a feel-good post from top to bottom. Not only is Ro’s match with Jayden perfect, but Ro lists ten added bonuses to their partnership that have nothing to do with Jayden’s guiding ability. Several side benefits (added potassium, quitting smoking) seem pretty unusual. Under “Attitude Adjustment,” Ro explains:

I might be feeling depressed and then it’s time for Jayden’s afternoon Kong Wobbler treat. I’ve taken to pronouncing “wobbler” so it sounds very French and you can’t stay in a bad mood when you’re asking your dog if he wants his Wobbler in a high pitched silly French accent.

Patti Brehler, a puppy raiser for Leader Dogs, wrote about her first Ten Weeks with Dutch, a Golden Retriever pup. A delight to read, each plays with puppies anecdote is accompanied by an impossibly cute picture of Dutch, such as the one below. And clearly, I’m not the only one who thinks he’s adorable:

Our only choice was to enter by the stage. As I coaxed my golden fur ball past the front row seats a harmonic “awwwww” rolled out ahead of us. The “awwwwws” resonated to the back of the room like a wave….

Guide Dog Jack was good enough to write L-Squared‘s post for her because she had writer’s block. Well, L-Squared better look out because the Chocolate Dog is such a talented humorist that he might take over her blog! (The pictures which illustrated each point are also great and often hilarious.) Jack wrote a list of ten ways in which his human is Not Perfect. Here’s number six, text and picture:

Sometimes I think my girl almost forgets to feed me, so I have to wake her up at o’dark-thirty – by poking her face repeatedly with my nose – to remind her that it will be time for my breakfast in only four more hours!

Martha of Believe in Who You Are has had her new guide, Jory, for ten weeks and is trying to figure out how to teach Jory to do A very good down:

With each dog, I learn something new. This time, I think it is if one method doesn’t work, try something else till she understands. I don’t expect her to be perfect, but I’ll be happy when she is very good and happily lying on the carpet or tile in and out of harness.

At her blog, Shai Ezer-Helper Beside Me: Training My Service Dog, khills wrote a long post chronicling Ten Terrific Training Months with their cherished trainer, Stacey. khills’s post contains many photos and videos (no descriptions or transcripts as far as I know) of her service dog, Shai (often accompanied by other Golden Retrievers) tackling an elevator phobia and a serious distraction problem with other dogs. Among their many adventures is a class with Victoria Stillwell!

When my sister & brother called to arrange a Mother’s Day dinner, I was able to look forward to a big gathering instead of worrying that Shai would not perform well in a big crowd. He rode for 5 hours in the car, then we went directly into the restaurant. He was perfect. Everyone talked about how well trained he was.

Embracing Imperfection

The posts in this section acknowledge that no person or assistance dog is perfect. These bloggers defy perceptions and judgments by the public, other assistance dog partners, or their own inner voices to celebrate their dogs and their partnerships. Some simply accept imperfection as a reality of life, while others celebrate certain imperfections as bonuses.

Cyndy of Gentle Wit wrote one of my favorite posts, thanks to its refreshing honesty and dry wit, about the myth of the perfect match — on both the handler side and the dog side — in her post, (Im)Perfection:

I’ll let you in a little secret: whatever you’ve heard from other guide dog users about their dog never needing a correction is totally and completely a lie. I used to be almost ashamed of my skills as a handler and disappointed in my guide dog because I heard this so many times before training, during training and even after training.

Starre of This Witch’s Familiar is joining the Carnival for the first time, and she’s a welcome addition. In ADBC: (im)Perfect, she talks about what she learned from her experience as an owner trainer of her retired service dog and what she’s hoping for with the yet-to-be-born puppy. A big hope seems to be more acceptance and support from the broader assistance dog community:

Most people who are trying to take this road *are* trying to do this right. Being told that you have to look and be perfect 100% of the time is not okay.  Nobody is perfect, and that’s what makes us human. That’s what makes our dogs, dogs. Its okay to be imperfect.

Flo of A Mutt and His Pack wrote a post that really resonated with me. Duncan is a rescue dog, and that always comes with its own challenges and rewards. I also nodded my head at the all-too-familiar description of how public perceptions of perfection and imperfection of a working dog team are often bass-ackwards. What moved me the most in ADBC #10 – Perfect 10, was the story of an Obedience competition where Duncan and Flo have different ideas of what perfect behavior is appropriate that day. Even though I’ve never competed in Obedience, I’ve had similar moments:

We disqualified on a Companion Dog (novice obedience) run because I was exhausted, and he broke heel to come around to my right side, my weak side. He wouldn’t sit on the halts because I was a little off kilter and he’s trained to stand and brace…. Duncan was a service dog. He’d been perfectly behaved for what I needed, not what I wanted, and I’d basically had a tantrum that we “failed” in front of a judge.

Brooke (with Cessna and Rogue) of ruled by paws wrote about Rogue, the puppy she is raising and training to be her successor guide dog. In Impossible Perfection, Brooke describes some of her own and her pup’s imperfections — which lead her to consider washing Rogue out — but with new equipment and improved training, the team is confidently moving forward:

Some people may look at our challenges and say that Rogue isn’t an acceptable guide dog candidate, but I’m not ready to give up on her. If I had given up on Cessna so easily, I would have missed out on eight amazing years of partnership with an amazing teacher.

Frida Writes is another who embraces imperfection. I related a great deal to her post, Perfectionism and Service Dog Training. Like me, she holds herself and her dog to high standards, standards which can be thwarted by the pain and exhaustion of illness. She discusses what happens if others see her team as less-than-perfect:

As I mentioned in my last ADBC post, it took me a while to figure out why my dog would sometimes throw himself in front of my footplates–to prevent someone from bumping into me hard, to draw my attention to the kind of men who frighten me… So what can initially look like a lack of perfection can be the purest of perfection–finding a need and fulfilling it, even when directed to do otherwise. It just does not appear that way to others. And I’m okay with that.

Remembering our Perfect Dogs

The last three posts look back on assistance dogs who made a profound impact on their handler’s life. Even though (or perhaps because) each dog came with some difficult issues, these dogs were, in certain ways, perfect for their partners.

I was really moved by The Pawpower Pack‘s post about her first guide dog, Rhoda. Perfect After All is a short but powerful post that takes the reader on the journey of a perfectionist newbie who overcomes unexpected behavioral problems with her first guide dog only to lose her to early illness. Having faced some similar struggles, this post at the Doghouse socked me in the gut:

When I got my first assistance dog, I admit to have watched far too many “Guide Dog Movies®” and read just as many “Guide Dog Books®” I had partaken of the “Guide Dog Program Koolade®” with gusto, and expected perfection! Instead, I got Rhoda — a crazy, hyper, and very unfocused dog who had been damaged emotionally by her time in the guide dog training kennel.

Karyn of Through a Guide’s Eyes tells the story of her first assistance dog, Chimette. Together, they shared A Decade of Love. Karyn describes defying expectations — others’ as well as her own — to train her own combo dog. Even though I knew Karyn through most of that decade, I realized in reading this post that I hadn’t known who she was before Chimette:

He taught me to love life in spite of the severe progressive nature my disabilities would take on. Most envision service dogs from a limited skill perspective. Either they are hearing dogs or guide dogs or mobility service skilled dogs or psychiatric dogs. I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined a dog doing as much for me as Met and I learned to do together over our decade long partnership.

My post was written in November, 2011, two years after my service dog, Gadget, died, and I only came across it now. In the pensive mood that hindsight and a new working partner brings, I pondered the question, Two Years Later: Was Gadget the Perfect Service Dog?

Sometimes I’ve thought that I built him up in my mind to be more perfect than he really was. I’ve wondered, “Was it really that Gadget was so amazing and special, or was it mostly that he was the service dog I needed to get the basic job done? Was it really more that I lucked into adopting a dog who learned solid public manners, assistance skills, and loved to learn — despite the issues he had when he arrived?”

Thank You, Readers and Bloggers!

Thank you so much to the bloggers who made this such a fantastic carnival, and thank YOU, our readers, for whom we write. I hope you will share the link to this post on your blogs or social media so that others can enjoy this splendid collection of posts. And as you make the rounds (at your convenience), consider leaving some comment love at the posts that speak to you.

Plus, bloggers, the raffle results are in. You may already be a winner! No, really — find out who takes the prize!

Lastly, the next #ADBC will be hosted by Frida Writes in April 2013. The schedule and other #ADBC details are at the Carnival home page.

Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and Barnum, SD

An Alert Pup!

Even when Barnum was a tiny puppy, I knew he had great potential for sound alert. He’s very sensitive to, and inquisitive about, noises. He also seems to have terrific hearing, which is a nice change of pace. (Gadget, I believe, was hard of hearing, and I think Jersey’s hearing was fine, but she just didn’t care much about sounds that were not food related.)

Why, as a hearing person, do I want Barnum to respond to certain sounds?

• To alert me to sounds, such as timers and alarms, that I don’t hear because I’ve fallen asleep;
• To alert me to sounds that I’ve forgotten I heard (timers and alarms), because of my cognitive impairment and memory problems; and
• To make him faster and more effective at retrieving the telephone when it is ringing, and I can’t get to it.

My plan was to train Barnum to perform the sound alerts that Gadget did, primarily alerting me to the stove timer going off. This was a very difficult skill for Gadget to master; it took several months of intensive training. Nonetheless, I’ve been confident that Barnum would learn this alert more solidly and quickly because he is much more attuned to sounds than Gadget was, and because I am a better trainer now.

I trained Gadget to alert to the stove timer as part of my effort to stop burning my meals to cinders.

However, a couple of years later, this skill became useful for an unexpected reason: I got Lyme disease, and for many months, I had to take antibiotics at 12-hour intervals. It is very rare for me to be awake and coherent for both ends of a 12-hour shift, every day.

Thus, Gadget became my medicine reminder. After taking my dose, I’d reset the timer for 12 hours. If I happened to be asleep when it went off, Gadget would hear it, open my bedroom door, run to get his orange squeaky “alert balls” and bring one back and wake me up with it. (You can see a [poor] demonstration of this skill in the second video in this previous post.)

Barnum Takes the (Sound) Stage

In a very laid-back way, I have been encouraging Barnum to pay attention to sounds ever since he was a little puppy. The sounds I’ve focused on are the ring of the cordless phone and the beeping of two timers: the stove timer and my digital “personal timer” (which lives on my overbed table, and which I use to remind myself of phone appointments or other happenings I’m likely to forget).

By “laid back,” I mean that I hadn’t set up training sessions to work on this. I just took advantage of opportunities that presented themselves (also known as “capturing,” in clicker parlance). In other words, if Barnum and I happened to be near the cordless phone when it rang, I’d  act excited, and say, “It’s the phone!” Then I’d toss him a treat. If he oriented to the phone (i.e., if he looked at or moved toward the phone), that definitely earned a click/treat.

I used the same approach with the kitchen timer.

I didn’t really consider this training; more like “pre-training.” My primary goal was to prevent Barnum from becoming so acclimated to these sounds that he stopped noticing them when the “real” training began.

A few weeks ago, because it was convenient, I decided to get slightly more proactive with building a foundation for sound alerts. Whenever my personal timer went off, I’d toss Barnum a high-value treat. He soon was leaping up and running over whenever he heard my timer, and I thought, “Huh, I should probably do something useful with this behavior.”

This urge was strengthened when we were in the living room a couple of weeks ago, and the phone rang. Barnum turned toward the phone and barked at it! I never taught him to do that. I was pleased and impressed.

Barnum Responds to Infusion Pump Alarm!

That’s when I realized I could — and should — train Barnum to be my infusion-pump alarm back-up.

Those of you with chronic Lyme disease or who have had chemotherapy or other long-term intravenous medication are probably familiar with the ins and outs of infusion pumps. For those who aren’t, here’s a crash course in home-infusion therapy, and how a service dog can be of use.

First, there’s the PICC line. PICC stands for “peripherally inserted central catheter.” It’s a flexible little tube that goes inside a vein from your upper arm to your heart, delivering medications into your bloodstream much more efficiently than by any other method. (Here’s a site on PICCs if you want more information.)

I know it looks weird, but it doesn't hurt, and I'm quite used to it after 18 months.

[Photo description: Sharon’s inner upper arm and elbow with PICC line and dressing. The PICC line is a very thin white plastic tube coming out of a round “biopatch” — which looks like a nickel-sized styrofoam disk — in Sharon’s biceps. The biopatch covers the entry site of the line. Several steri-strips hold the biopatch and line in place. A hypoallergenic clear sterile dressing that looks like a piece of plastic covers the PICC area, with two pieces of hypoallergenic medical tape holding down the dressing. The line emerges from under the dressing to a red clasp, which is opened when flushing or infusing. A white plastic cap connects the line to a clear extension tube, which is a port into which syringes of medication or saline can be inserted for infusing or flushing.]

The above photo description tells you the rest of what you need to know (or maybe more than you wanted to know!). The only unusual thing others with PICCs might notice is that this is not a typical PICC dressing. Most of the stuff normally used for cleaning and dressing PICC sites makes my skin erupt and blister in a nasty way. (Thanks, MCS!)

At any rate, I do two infusions a day, 12 hours apart.

To do an infusion, I have to clean the port with a disinfectant, then flush my line with saline (the smaller white syringe in the picture below). Then I hook up an extension tube between the antibiotic and my PICC line. Infusing the antibiotic (the really big syringe attached to the pump in the picture below) takes about 45 minutes. The pump ensures that all the medicine goes in at a slow, steady rate.

When the tube of antibiotic is empty, the pump alarm sounds, which is a loud, grating, “Beep, beep, beep,” and a red light flashes. The I unhook my line, clean it, and flush it with saline again, and finally with heparin (the yellow syringe below).

The red light on the pump indicates the alarm is going off, and it's time to unhook the extension tubing and flush my PICC line.

[Photo description: two 12 millilitre syringes, without needles, one yellow, one white, lie on a red background next to a 60 millilitre syringe which is attached to a rectangular, brown Bard pump, about nine inches long and three inches wide. Extension tubing comes out of the big syringe. A red light is on at the bottom of the pump, next to the word, “Alarm.”]

Rather, that’s what’s supposed to happen, and most of the time, it does. However, on occasion, I fall asleep while I’m infusing. When this occurs, I wake up many hours later, my line still connected to the pump, the flushes laying nearby, unused. Tellingly, the pump switch has magically been moved from “Alarm” to “Off”!

Actually, I’m pretty sure no magic is involved. The only reasonable explanation is that I wake up just enough to switch the alarm off and then fall immediately back to asleep. I have no idea how long the pump is alarming before I turn it off in my mostly unconscious state. In the morning, I almost never remember waking up and turning off the alarm.

This is less than ideal! The line should really be flushed immediately after infusing. Also, if I were to ever startle awake and move quickly, I could potentially pull the line out of place (particularly because my dressing does not allow for as secure an attachment as is standard practice for PICCs).

Exciting reenactment: I fall asleep while infusing.

[Photo description: Sharon lies asleep in bed, propped up with pillows. She wears gray sweatpants and a purple sweatshirt over a pink nightshirt. On her left side the sweatshirt has been pulled up to expose her upper arm, where the PICC dressing and tubing are visible, attached by a long, thin, clear line to the infusion pump, which rests against Sharon’s thigh. On her legs, the saline and heparin flushes lie, waiting to be used after the infusion is over.]

I realized that a really useful skill, and one that would probably not be hard to teach, would be to train Barnum to wake me when my infusion pump goes off.

I started out with classical conditioning, just tossing Barnum one of his favorite treats each time the alarm went off. He made the connection very quickly — within a few days.

Then I moved to operant conditioning, shaping Barnum’s behavior. Once he showed any reaction to the pump alarm, I clicked for the response. As always when shaping, I started with whatever small behavior he offered, such as cocking his ear toward the sound, or turning his head toward it, or just looking up from a nap. Eventually I withheld the click until he was trotting over.

My plan had been to keep upping the ante to get him to jump on the bed, nudge me, etc., until I woke and reward him.

Sunday morning was the first, and only, time I cued a behavior — jumping on the bed (“Paws up!”) — before clicking and tossing the treat.

That night, as usual, I flushed with saline, connected the pump and began infusing. I had my clicker and Barnum’s special treat ready for when the alarm went off. About half an hour into the infusion, I got the suddenly sleepy, struggling-to-stay-awake feeling. I thought that knowing I had to be awake to capture and click Barnum’s response to the alarm would keep me awake.

I was dreaming — literally!

The next thing I knew, I was awakened. All was confusion. The bed was moving, and I didn’t know why. There was a strange noise.

I struggled to orient myself.

The first thing that registered was that Barnum was on my bed, panting and smiling at me. Then, the strange sound resolved, as well — it was the infusion pump alarm.

Amazing dog! Barnum had jumped on the bed of his own accord and woken me when the alarm went off!

I praised him as I scrambled for the clicker, and tossed him his prized treat. I continued to praise effusively, tossing a large handful of other treats I happened to have in my bed.

I’m here! Wake up! I want my treat!

[Photo description: Barnum, a shaggy black brindle bouvier, with only one eye peeking out from under his hair, has jumped partway onto the bed, with his front legs and chest resting on a dark raspberry-colored comforter. He looks relaxed and slightly expectant. Sharon’s powerchair is visible in the background.]

I was so excited! With Gadget, I had had to spend weeks just on feigning sleep during timer-alert sessions. I will plan to train this way with Barnum — pretending to be asleep when the alarm goes off. He’ll have to really work for that treat by jumping on the bed, nudging me, licking me, etc.

However, I had thought that if I actually did fall asleep while Barnum was at this stage of training, he would have popped up from the floor, looked for his treat, and when he didn’t get it — when I just lay there, conked out — he would give up and go back to bed.

Instead, Barnum made a mental leap that required not just thinking (i.e., problem solving), but self-confidence, too.

I believe our recent focus on lots of free-shaping sessions (as I described in a previous post) led to this breakthrough.

Now, saying that Barnum is a service-dog-in-training feels more legitimate. The pay-off for our training is no longer just fun or incremental steps in increased obedience and communication; the real-world application of practical service skills is becoming apparent.

Barnum’s increased exuberance and eagerness to offer behavior in the absence of a cue or other encouragement from me is thrilling!

An Alert Pup . . . and a Groggy Human

Any assistance dog partner will tell you that there are two members of the team, and both have to do their jobs. Sunday night, Barnum rose to the occasion, while I fell asleep on the job!

After I shut off the alarm and finished fussing over Barnum, I turned my attention to unwrapping my saline and heparin flushes and looking for my sterile wipes and line caps — the supplies necessary to finish the infusion process. . . . The next thing I knew, it was morning, my left arm was still out of my shirt sleeve, and my PICC line was stretched down to the pump!

These are the times when both the pros and cons of being a disabled person training my own service dog come into sharp focus.

On the down side, I had underestimated my functionality. I had thought that being awakened by Barnum, and being forced to interact with him, would keep me lively enough to finish the infusion process. I had not factored in how my cognitive impairment (in this case, memory and concentration issues) would intersect with my sleep disorders. I had not given enough weight to how hard it is for me to “stay on task” when my body and brain switch from “nothing you do will allow you to fall asleep” to “nothing you do will allow you to stay awake”!

On the upside, I now know that I have to build in back-up systems after the initial wake-up, to keep me awake, or to wake me repeatedly, until I finish flushing my line. This is perhaps the biggest bonus of partner-training: I can trouble-shoot and adjust skills as we go along, because nobody knows my disabilities better than I do.

Another bonus to doing all this practice with him is that I am also training myself.

This was the unexpected perk to training Gadget to alert me to the oven timer. People who don’t have brain injury often don’t understand that their suggestions of seemingly straightforward solutions to memory problems, such as “write a reminder note” or “set a timer” require the cognitively impaired person to remember to write the note or set the timer, and also to remember where the note is, to remember what the timer going off means, or to remember to jump up the instant the timer goes off and go do the thing the timer is reminding one of. I write notes all the time to remind myself of what to do, and then I misplace and forget about the existence of the note!

Indeed, before training the memory alert with Gadget, the biggest impediments to using a timer to prevent me from burning my food had been:

1. Forgetting to set the timer in the first place;
2. If I did set the timer, not responding the moment the timer went off (e.g., if I was writing an email, I’d think, “I’ll just finish this sentence,” and then forget that the timer ever went off) and keep on keyboarding; and
3. If I did get up to go to the stove as soon as I heard the timer, I usually became distracted by something on the way (even though the stove was only a few feet from my desk), and forget the original reason for getting up.

However, when I worked for months on training a complex timer alert with Gadget, I spent a lot of time focused on setting the timer, remembering to keep clicker and treats handy to respond when the timer went off, etc.  It became a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy for me. The end result was that I was much more likely to remember to set the timer when I put something on to cook, and I was also more likely to respond to it when it went off, sometimes because Gadget alerted me, but sometimes simply because my mind was better trained to hone in on the timer.

Thus, I’ve decided that the best way to address this added dimension of the infusion pump alarm with Barnum is to train us both to following this protocol:

1. When the pump goes off, Barnum bugs me (jumps on the bed, nudges me, licks me, etc.), until I wake up.
2. The instant I wake up, I hit my personal timer (set for six or seven minutes).
3. I turn off the infusion alarm, and reward Barnum for having alerted me.
4. I attempt to stay awake to unhook, infuse, and put things away.
5. However, if I do fall asleep before I’m done, the other timer will go off, and Barnum will alert to that, leading us to repeat steps one through four.
6. If I do get my line taken care of, and the timer goes off before I’m done, I reward Barnum for alerting to it anyway.

In other words, I’ve had to add a step. Or a step that repeats itself. So, it’s really just more of the same. Which is sort of the essence of clicker training: once you build a foundation, it’s all variations on a theme, requiring flexibility, creativity, and knowing the rules by which you’re playing.

This is also the essence of a service dog partnership.

And of life.

I’m so proud of my dog! And I’m not feeling too bad about myself, either. Nice change of pace.

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget (I’d have done better with the timer alert if you’d trained it better!), and Barnum (What’s that sound?!) Medical-alert-dog-in-the-making!

Assistance Dog Blog Carnival #1

What a thrilling moment! The first Assistance Dog (AD) Blog Carnival!

Thanks so much to everyone who submitted, spread the word, and contributed to this amazing first assistance dog carnival.

And thank you, readers, without whom this would all be pointless!

We even have a button, courtesy of Cura’s Mom of Cura’s Corner.

Feel free to copy this button for your current or future AD Blog Carnival posts!

From the tremendous response of the AD blogging community, it seems as if I’m not the only one who is excited to share an AD “First” with our readers. In fact, the themes of excitement, joy, and pride run throughout the blogs in this edition. There were also a lot of blogs on the same or similar topics. I had hoped to be able to amply blurb/review every submission, but in the end it felt like it would make this post too long and repetitive. So, I have highlighted those that stand out for me in some way in each category — sometimes because a piece is written particularly well, other times because it covers an unusual topic or takes it on in an unusual way — but also included the links for other worthy posts in each category.

Enjoy! If you can’t read them all today, bookmark the page and work your way through the rest over time.

Sometimes defining moments occur even before a person decides to acquire an AD….

This was the case for Ro of In the Center of the Roof. One of my favorite entries, Carnival Post – My First meeting with a guide dog, is a deeply moving, and lushly tactile, tribute to the first guide dog (GD) Ro met after becoming blind. Here, she reveals how a brief connection to a guide and handler inspired her to acquire a GD for herself and experience a world of greater freedom and confidence.

Carin at Vomit Comet’s What Showed Me The Way To Getting A Guide Dog describes one day of learning the ins and outs of life with a GD — and getting all the questions answered she had ever been afraid to ask. This is a wry post that moves at a fast clip — much like her top-secret test-drive of her friend’s GD! — with some memorable lines, like, “Do you have to pick up the pee, too?”

The first day they met their AD….

In Gilbert and Me: Life with my Guide Dog, Remembering Our One-Year Anniversary, Anastoff describes the day she received her guide dog — with a difference from the typical GD “gotcha day” narrative: she had already met Gilbert, and he was being brought to her home, instead of Anastoff going to a GD school. A young woman on the cusp of college and independence from her family, Anastoff ponders this new form of responsibility and interdependence with the help of wisdom beyond her years and a terrific analogy from her mother, who shared in the day.

• Tori at The Average Blog By An Average Blogger‘s The Assistance Dog Blog Carnival:First Times…. takes us from the first time she met a GD (at age four) through the process of qualifying for a GD in Ireland to her very recent partnering with Ushi, her first guide.

• Jen, also an Irish GD partner, remembers in vivid detail her  first meeting with OJ, the black lab who would finally be her first GD, after waiting most of her life. Read “first” time I met him at Paws for Thought.

• Beverly Cain at Assistance Dog Training – Psych Dog reveals a big transition and her first days with her new SDiT (service dog in training), in My first Days with Indy.

 

Our First Assistance Dogs…

L-Squared at Dog’s Eye View, who is at Guide Dogs of America training with her successor right now(!), has written one of the best pieces I’ve seen on the inevitability of comparisons, and how comparisons between her guides are not necessarily good or bad, just different, in First vs. Second.

Kali at Brilliant Mind Broken Body peppers her blog with an assortment of the many of the firsts that have been part of her partnership with SD, Hudson. Ranging from disappointing and sad to joyful and funny, they are all The first…

• Here at After Gadget, I pay homage to my first SD, My Sweet Jersey Girl, who taught me how to train and gave me so many firsts.  Along with photos, I use excerpts from articles published over a decade ago to tell the story of how we became a team.

• TrulyAble of College and Disability is training at her first service dog’s program right now, too! Libby will soon be a (Service) Dog on Campus.

 

The first time working in public or other “public firsts”

The Trouble Is… reveals how her SD allowed her a new level of freedom for the first time while in public, in Freedom.

• Ashley, at The CRPS Girl, tells of when she and her medical-alert service dog, Dixie, entered the public sphere in  The First Outing: Assistance Dog Blog Carnival.

• Sherlock at Sherlock’s Stuff introduces her boxer SDiT and all the details that went into Beau’s First Mall Adventure.

 

Puppy Raising Firsts

Trainer Robin Sallie‘s Picking a Puppy at Raising K9 is a true delight! Her task was choosing a puppy from a carefully selected litter to train as a companion and assistant to her 8-year-old daughter. (With “The Kidlet” also assisting in temperament testing and the future training of her dog.) Fantastic detail, clarity of purpose, and economy of words characterize this post. The photographs are beautiful and illustrate the story beautifully.

• Pattib at Plays with Puppies reveals why her first “failure” as a puppy raiser was not a failure at all, in My FIRST…Future Leader Dog Puppy.

In leagues of their own! Blogs addressing unique firsts….

• Linda Alberda’s blog, From Puppy to Public Access, tells of two crucial firsts — not only when her first SD alerted her to her medical condition, but when her SDiT did, as well — both of them still in early puppyhood! Her tale is called, Two of the Most Important Firsts in my Assistance Dog Journey.

• Katrin at By My Side wrote First Choice, about her self-trained guide and autism service dog, James, who chose, as a puppy, to take on the job of service dog.

• Cura’s Corner divulges a range of firsts as rescue SD Cura overcomes her fear of . . . of all things . . . hot air balloons! You have to read it to believe it, in It’s Carnival! Let’s Party!

I hope you have enjoyed this wonderful Assistance Dog Blog Carnival. Please show your love to all the bloggers and comment at their sites.

The next issue of the carnival will be in January, hosted by L^2 at Dog’s Eye View. Please check back in here or there to find out the topic and the deadline for submissions.

Blog: Assistance Dog Training- Psych dog
Title: My first Days with Indy
Linky: http://adtraining.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-first-days-with-indy.html