Day 4: Fern comes home!

Today was amazing. As soon as we arrived at camp, Mika went to Fern's kennel, put on her collar and leash and took her outside to go potty. On a side note, the command for that is "better hurry". I don't know why, but I guess they had a hard time convincing guys to say "go potty". :-)

Mika was so into working with Fern. She took charge in the training and patiently practiced over and over again. Jennifer, bless her heart, said that if caregivers (non-recipients) were doing more than necessary or being annoying, the recipients could tell the caregivers to back off. Curse her for saying that in front of a nearly 13 year old girl. Now, Mika is smart enough not to directly tell me to back off, so instead she said "Remember what Jennifer said. Caregivers can't be annoying." Pretty diplomatic for a 12 1/2 year old.

All of the lectures today were directed towards what we needed to know to take the dogs back with us tonight. I was actually nervous about it. When Mika and Fern were by themselves in the yard they did very well. But in the chaos of the training room, both of them were easily distracted. They would work well together and then one would be distracted by a noise or commotion. Logically I knew that it was the chaos of the room, not the apparent ADD of both kid and dog that made things seems so hard. Still, there were moments where I actually questioned the idea that we could make this work. It seemed like having two toddlers again.

As I'm sitting here typing this, I have no doubt whatsoever that this is a prefect match. Some of the dogs have had a very hard time adjusting to the hotel, staying with people they've known for 2 days. When Fern first came in, she and Mika spent about 20 minutes playing with a red rubber ball. Then they sat on the floor and Mika was petting Fern. After 5 minutes of quiet, I looked over and both of them had fallen asleep on the floor. It was sweet! I bet no other match has that happen tonight. Now that it's a calm and quiet room, Fern has done everything Mika cued and then some. Mika has done everything from feeding, to walking, to taking her potty. In exchange, Fern is sleeping on Mika's bed and seems willing to consider sharing.

Another side note: Mika's left wrist just started hurting out of no where about an hour ago. She wasn't doing anything with it but gasped and grabbed her wrist. She looked at me, her face turned white and her eyes filled with tears. She started rocking back and forth and said "Mom, my wrist hurts really bad. Like, collarbone, bad." This is not happy news, because the "collarbone bad" refers to when she spontaneously broke her collarbone. No known cause, other than brittle bones. She has a really high tolerance for pain (brittle bones and EDS will do that for you) so it's significant if she actually says something about it.  I've just had her ice her wrist and we'll start the ibuprofen regiment again. Hopefully, it's no more than growing pains and the pain will be gone tomorrow. Crossing my fingers.