Saturday, November 13, 2010

The Saturday Night Post, November 13th, 2010 - all the news fit to print ... before the site crashes

OK, another shot at this ... I got some tech advice so this should work ..
The last I left our canine hero, we were in week two of training and the first week had it poopy days, or the days i could not even find the poopy ... but that got so much better I no longer fear the scoop or the scoop of the poop ... what I do fear is Indian food ... when Calvin hounds some up off the floor of my favourite place and transports it home and deposits it on my living room floor the next day - with a very familiar scent from the night before ... i.e., spicy food does not digest in dog's digestive tract ...

Anyway, back to week two of trianing ... from wht I can recall ... Clearly I was learning quite a bit, like how to function on less and less sleep ... there were more very very late night as we were fortunate to have San Jose weather in usually rainy Portland ... I had way too much cold weather clothing and mot enough clean underwear, um, sorry mother, I mean not enough clean t-shirts .. so I did laundry more often and, well stayed chatting with my new little family/friends ...

I do recall one evening when abut five of us decided to watch a movie so we spent about way too long choosing a movie, a vhs movie I might add, from the dorm's collection, settling on one with Steve Martin called Mixed Nuts ..

Joke - how many blind folks does it take to start a movie?
Answer - five, four guide dogs and about thiry minutes ...
Only to find out that someone with a very off sense of humour or bad braille skills put Shrek Two in the Mixed Nuts box ... so down to two remaining willing participants we watched that one ...

Funny, I do not think we all tried to watch another movie ...

Some word about Calvin and his guide work, at this stage ... Not sure if I posted about this before but as much trouble as I was having with obedience, his guide work, or rather our team work went very well from the get go ... Our first walk I kept saying to myslef, this is amazing ... so much build up to this point and now I am walking (with my eyes closed) and not hitting anything. Later I found out we are supposed to let our instructions know if we close our eyes - for us low vision folks .. oops ...

We walked routes in the small town near the dorms, called GResham which a little bigger then Ste-Agathe for you Montreal folks and sort of like a small district in San Francisco ... the hardest thing for me there was remembering the streets we were to walk on our own later that week, the firt week ... in retrospect, concentrating so much on what direction I was supposed to be travelling I forgot to think about guide work and just followed Calvin ... On Thursday in that first week we did out first two night routes for which I have no vision at all except if there is street lights and my days hanging under light posts are done and over ...

With the chill night air giving Calvin a little extra energy, or the thought of the bean bag chair tht awaited him at the end, he sped off that first route with a little extra bounce in his step ... I just KISS, as our supervisor kept telling us to do and just went with him. I am sure it helped to know that our instructors were following close behind but I had mo idea how close .. anyway we breezed through it and it was sort of an emotional moment for me as I never ever thought I would be able to walk alone at night again ... OK, stop crying D, it is not big deal ...

Calvin did not walk me into anything that night or any other night ... yet .... He did almost walk me into a tree another day route and I am reminded about that so let me tell you about Calvin, trail walking and booties ... somewhere later in the second week, we went to a new area to experience, among other things, trail walking. Now this was not hiking, just trail that had small rocks, pebbles or packed dirt ... So I found Calvin's Kryptonite - he slowed right down and he did not make me change my socks and underwear as often ... sorry for the image ... He was kind of slow so my instructor suggested n the way back we try his little booties that we are given for escalator and cold or hot weather travel ... they are also for walking on surfaces that may hurt his little pads ... So here we are at the beginning of the trail and I am struggling to put four little velcro attached booties on the dog with all the style of socks and sandles style and he is not loving this but as with most other things he is trusting me and staying in place. Staying so much that after I was dripping in sweat and his little booties were on, I pick up the harness and give him the forward command. No response. Command repeated. Nope. I put down the harness ahndle,lean over and give him a pep talk that Gene Wilder would be proud of talking to his monster to walk ... Nada. On my instructors suggetion I pull him and he stumbles forward. Victory. Perhaps we will move some ... and then , BOOM! Like underdog his neurons connect, oh yes, I can walk in these and proceeds to run like speedy gonzalez, me slipping on the rocks barley keeping up, not to mention my footing ... My instructor is porbably thinking I may be in trouble because she sort of yells for me to stop grabs my arm and I see about three inches in front of me her ahd and right behing that a nice solid, tree ... that was a close one. Mental note, get heavier booties for the dog.

Well, I will make this part one of the post and not push my luck .. if this posts successfully, I will continue it later or tomorrow ...

On the next post ... "This is why we can not have nice thngs ..."

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