the triology ends

This is the third, and final, installment of the background trilogy. Hang in there, we're almost done!

After being unable to find a full time job locally, I accepted a full time job in Texas in October. I called Canine Assistants about a month before the move to update the information in our folder. In true irony, they were going to call me that day to tell me that they finally found a sponsor for the dog! I was so excited I did a happy dance at my desk! Then came the bad news. There was going to be a big award presentation and it was scheduled 1 week AFTER we were to move. What are the odds?!?! After much negotiating and going back and forth, the date was moved up to 4 days before we move, which raised my stress level to stroke level.

I had never heard of any sort of presentation ceremony with the sponsor, so I called CA at least three separate times to ask questions. The local business that sponsored us, in conjunction with CA, sent out notices to all the area newspapers and news stations. So we would be standing in front of a whole group of complete strangers along with journalists who would be staring at us like a freak show. And because my daughter doesn't usually "look disabled" that would lead to a lot of rude questions. One thing I've learned quickly is that if you have (or mention) a service dog, people feel they have the right to ask rude, invasive questions about your health. If someone asks a question with no intent of being rude, snoopy or obnoxious, I will usually answer them with whatever form response we have. Lately, we've settled on "She has brittle bones, so they break easily." This is not a complete answer by any means, but it's an vague answer that most people can understand. If someone is being pushy, rude or jerkish in general I will say something along the lines of "I'm sorry, I don't believe it talking about my daughter with strangers." That has stopped everyone so far, but if there ever comes a time someone persists I'll get to be more rude and say things like "Why are you staring at my kid? Are you some sort of pervert, trying to follow my kid around? I swear, I'm calling the cops if you don't leave within 5 seconds."

Okay, back to the presentation. I had to flat out force my daughter to go to the presentation. Frankly, I dreaded it more than she did, but I wasn't dumb enough to tell her that. I tried to come up with best case scenarios and talk about that with Mika. Because I pulled her from school just for the presentation, we were in jeans and a nice shirt. I thought it would be an informal thing, but it turns out the people running the show were in dress suits! I felt like a moron. To make a VERY long story short, all the store employees were there, as was the general manager, the representative from Milk Bone and a rep from Canine Assistants. And, to my horror, there were journalists from all the news stations and newspapers for a 50 mile radius. I loathe being the center of attention, but Mika was in tears because everyone was staring at her. It took a little manuerving but I end up dealing with all the journalists on one side of the room and Mika was with the visiting service dog and the rep from CA. All of the journalists except one were complete gentlemen, asking questions without demanding personal information about our lives or Mika's medical history. There was one reporter from a local news station that was a jerk. He kept asking the same dang question over and over! He managed to annoy  me, the store manager, the Milk Bone rep and the CA rep in 10 minutes. He was the one to ask to interview Mika and kept asking her over and over "So how hard is it going to be to have to wait another year to get your dog?" Mika replied that it was hard, but she could be patient because she knew it was coming soon. The second, third and fourth time he asked it, I answered for her. All of the other journalists looked like they wanted to smack the man. At the end of the two hours, we had a huge fake check from the sponsor that was used for the photos, a cake that was made to feed 75, the promise of a service dog, a pissed of mom and a traumatized kid and service dog-in-training.

That event was a nightmare for me. I'm a pretty private person overall. I'm sure that surprises some people, given that I can talk a mile a minute, but very few people actually know the details of our lives. I had to open up a part of our lives for everyone to see, which is so very very very hard. I was truly scared of what the articles and reports would say, because they would be seen or read by most of the people we know. Before I even had a chance to read/see them I had calls from friends telling us congrats on the dog. Everyone was so supportive! I honestly expected flack from people, but I completely underestimated our community. My daughter was really concerned about what the kids at school would do when they saw it, like most 12 year olds would be. Instead of teasing her, all of the kids were amazingly supportive. Even kids she didn't know well came up to her and told her congrats on getting a service dog and asked her if she would bring it so school.

I thought we wouldn't get the dog for at least another year. A few days after the presentation Francis from CA (I love that woman) called and said we could go to a training camp at the end of March 2012 or January 2013. It wasn't hard to decide on the March camp. That means taking Mika out of school for two weeks, which is bad. Because I've only been at my job since November, I'll have to take the two weeks off unpaid because I can't use vacation and I don't qualify for FMLA. Yes, that's a lot of bad, but the end result will be so very worth it.

Ultimately, the whole reason we were willing to do a public presentation and why I'm writing this blog is to help people. There are so many people out there who don't know about service dogs that aren't seeing eye dogs. There are even more people who erroneously believe that if you don't look horribly disfigured, then you can't have any type of disability. This is so very very untrue. So even though it's hard to bare my soul and open up our private journey, if I can reach just one person, this will all be worth it.