I have to take just a moment and brag about Fern. Do you remember the first week we had to put Fern in the kennel? It was awful! It took lots of bribes and 10 minutes to get her to reluctantly go in and then she would whine and fuss. I had major guilt. I followed what the trainers told us at camp. I put a Kong with frozen peanut butter in it to keep her busy. I would alternate the Kong with a rawhide bone, which she loves. I would keep her favorite toy in there. I would leave the radio on for her to listen to and I left a light on in case she wanted more light than daylight. She wouldn't eat her rawhide or peanut butter, which can be a sign of stress. Let me tell you, both M and I were showing signs of stress, too.
So I came up with a half baked scheme to convince Fern that her kennel was the best doggie place ever. We have always kept her bowls of food and water in her kennel, so that was a good start. Then I started keeping all of her toys in the kennel, so she has to go in and get whichever one she wants to play with for the moment. That was a big help for sure.
We've also settled into a routine, which I have no doubt helps also. When we first came home we would feed her and then take her for a walk right away in the morning (think 0600). For the past couple of week, we've switched to taking her for a walk after we're all ready for school/work. That has worked better for all of us, as no one in our house is a morning person/dog.
I think what sealed the deal was the dog bed. About a week ago I bought a big pillow for Fern to lay on because I don't allow her on the sofas. It took her a day or two to warm up to it but now she loves it. M puts the pillow in her kennel in the morning and then takes it out as soon as she's home from school and Fern loves it. The pillow goes in first, then the toys, then sometimes a rawhide bone follows and last is a large Milkbone treat that she only gets when she goes into the kennel.
I am now convinced that we found the magic formula. Yesterday she went in as soon as we had things arranged, even before she got her treat. Today, as soon as we took off her harness from her walk, she bolted for her kennel. I actually had to convince her to leave the kennel so I could get the pillow in first. I didn't even get the pillow arranged perfectly (hey, I like them straight and in order) before she was curled up on it, obviously waiting for her toys. I put in her 3 favorite stuffed animals and her Kong ball (yes, she's that spoiled) and by the time I came back with her Milkbone, she had the toys arranged on her pillow so they were two on each side of her. She gently took the treat from my hand and settled onto her pillow, obviously ready for me to shut the door.
I'm so excited she likes her kennel! I know I'm tooting my own horn, but I am really happy we found a way for her to enjoy alone time and made her kennel a fun place to be because it makes it so much easier on all of us!
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Cute pictures
I have a couple of cute pictures that I have to share.
Doesn't this say it all?
Fern's puppy ears mean she is ready to play.
This is how Fern likes to sleep.
Doesn't this say it all?
Fern's puppy ears mean she is ready to play.
Fern antics
Fern is starting to show a mischievous side that we hadn't seen before. The past week has been full of funny moments. You want examples? I'm so glad you asked.
Fern loves stuffed animals of any kind. In fact she has three that we keep in the house and one that we keep in the car. She'll carry them around to show off, but doesn't really want you to touch them, just admire them. Well, M loves stuffed animals, too, so there are plenty around her room. Fern has found no less than 6 stuffed animals in various places. When we figured out she liked them M put all of hers up in the closet or on a shelf. Well, Fern found a couple under her bed and brought them out. The pic below is where Fern grabbed an armadillo puppet off the middle of my bed (which she's not allowed on).Then she found a couple that were by the reading chair in my bedroom. She found one that my brother sent M from Finland by reaching up to get it off of the 3rd shelf of the bookcase. And she took one from Mika while she was sleeping. I heard talking at 4 in the morning and came running out of my room thinking something was seriously wrong. Fern was sitting on the floor pretending not to hear or see M talking to her, holding the teddy bear between her two paws. I got the bear back for M and Fern refused to sleep on M's bed for the rest of the night.
The past week Fern has decided she loves the texture of plastic in her mouth. M has lots of Littlest Pet Shop toys in a basket. When M's friend was over last week they were playing with them on the floor of her bedroom. Fern watched for a while then stealthily walked over and picked up a plastic bed. She came bouncing out of the room, tail wagging, smiling as she showed me what she had found. She was very reluctant to give it up. Mika was upset Fern got something that could choke her so she shut her bedroom door while they played. Fern has never had Mika shut away from her before and she stood in front of her door for 10 minutes before she gave up. I felt a little mean, but it was better than knowing she liked little toys that could choke her.
Fern pulled a little con on M this Wednesday. Fern adores rawhide bones, but I limit the amount she can have so she doesn't get sick. I gave her a medium sized rawhide in the morning to keep her busy while M (who was sick) slept and I went to work. (On a side note, M is now able to stay at home by herself!) She called me when on my lunch break and we talked about how she was doing. She mentioned that Fern brought her the bag of small rawhide bones, so M gave her one. She was so proud that Fern asked for one instead of taking them all. What she didn't realize was that Fern had gotten the bag out of the box they are kept in by going into her kennel, moving a box across her kennel roof, going outside the kennel, standing up to balance herself on the outside of the kennel and reached into the box to grab the bag. So Fern had a good time eating more rawhide bones than she's normally allowed in a week. Silly dog.
Fern loves stuffed animals of any kind. In fact she has three that we keep in the house and one that we keep in the car. She'll carry them around to show off, but doesn't really want you to touch them, just admire them. Well, M loves stuffed animals, too, so there are plenty around her room. Fern has found no less than 6 stuffed animals in various places. When we figured out she liked them M put all of hers up in the closet or on a shelf. Well, Fern found a couple under her bed and brought them out. The pic below is where Fern grabbed an armadillo puppet off the middle of my bed (which she's not allowed on).Then she found a couple that were by the reading chair in my bedroom. She found one that my brother sent M from Finland by reaching up to get it off of the 3rd shelf of the bookcase. And she took one from Mika while she was sleeping. I heard talking at 4 in the morning and came running out of my room thinking something was seriously wrong. Fern was sitting on the floor pretending not to hear or see M talking to her, holding the teddy bear between her two paws. I got the bear back for M and Fern refused to sleep on M's bed for the rest of the night.
The past week Fern has decided she loves the texture of plastic in her mouth. M has lots of Littlest Pet Shop toys in a basket. When M's friend was over last week they were playing with them on the floor of her bedroom. Fern watched for a while then stealthily walked over and picked up a plastic bed. She came bouncing out of the room, tail wagging, smiling as she showed me what she had found. She was very reluctant to give it up. Mika was upset Fern got something that could choke her so she shut her bedroom door while they played. Fern has never had Mika shut away from her before and she stood in front of her door for 10 minutes before she gave up. I felt a little mean, but it was better than knowing she liked little toys that could choke her.
Fern pulled a little con on M this Wednesday. Fern adores rawhide bones, but I limit the amount she can have so she doesn't get sick. I gave her a medium sized rawhide in the morning to keep her busy while M (who was sick) slept and I went to work. (On a side note, M is now able to stay at home by herself!) She called me when on my lunch break and we talked about how she was doing. She mentioned that Fern brought her the bag of small rawhide bones, so M gave her one. She was so proud that Fern asked for one instead of taking them all. What she didn't realize was that Fern had gotten the bag out of the box they are kept in by going into her kennel, moving a box across her kennel roof, going outside the kennel, standing up to balance herself on the outside of the kennel and reached into the box to grab the bag. So Fern had a good time eating more rawhide bones than she's normally allowed in a week. Silly dog.
Rude questions
I knew going into the service dog process that we would get rude comments. Heck, most of Mika's life I've heard "But she looks so normal!", and that's definitely not a compliment. I even wrote Dear Abby about what to say. And she actually answered me! I feel so famous. :-)
Anyways, Abby didn't object to my politely telling strangers to mind their own business. And yes, I'm trying to be polite and, boy is it hard. I asked her what to say to acquaintances when they asked. They are people I can't be rude to, but I'm not comfortable giving information to. She told me to say "Oh, I don't want to bore you with the details" and then change the subject. It's good advice but I'm not good at coming up with new subjects off the top of my head when there's not much shared background. I need to come up with a good go-to topic. I'm always happy to default to baseball. Some people love it and will be happy to talk. Some people hate it and will do almost everything to avoid it. It seems like a good option now that I think about it. I'll have to try it and see how it goes.
Anyways, Abby didn't object to my politely telling strangers to mind their own business. And yes, I'm trying to be polite and, boy is it hard. I asked her what to say to acquaintances when they asked. They are people I can't be rude to, but I'm not comfortable giving information to. She told me to say "Oh, I don't want to bore you with the details" and then change the subject. It's good advice but I'm not good at coming up with new subjects off the top of my head when there's not much shared background. I need to come up with a good go-to topic. I'm always happy to default to baseball. Some people love it and will be happy to talk. Some people hate it and will do almost everything to avoid it. It seems like a good option now that I think about it. I'll have to try it and see how it goes.
A day of fieldtrips
What a day. Mikaela as been sick for a while now and I gave in and took her to the doctor. We spent about two hours there total between waiting and seeing the doctor. Fern did a great job overall, bar one little bark. Fern was asleep next to Mika's chair when the nurse knocked once on the door and came in. It startled all of us and Fern let out a quiet bark at the nurse. She was fine after that and even went back to sleep, but every time the nurse came in the room from then on she would tell Fern to 'chill' or 'just relax'. Given that Fern was lying under Mika's chair I didn't find her comments necessary, but I let them go for the most part.
We were sent up to the children's hospital to make sure that her heart was still doing well. The entire walk from the parking garage to the EKG rooms was filled with people smiling and even cooing at Fern. We've made it a policy that if we are on a schedule we don't acknowledge people with more than a smile. It's not that we don't appreciate the positive reactions, because we absolutely do. It's just that we've learned the hard way that once you give someone the opening to talk you will be there forever. They'll want to ask questions about Fern, then they'll want to tell you all about their dog and their favorite dog experiences, too. And then more people will stop to talk when they see that you are receptive to talk and it will take 15 minutes to move away.
When we got into the EKG waiting area a receptionist looked up and said "oh no". We went up to the desk and after a minute I told M to go grab a seat for us in the waiting room. As M walked away, the receptionist turned to me and said "Is that a seeing eye dog?" Given that my daughter very obviously was looking at the aquarium while she walked towards the chairs, it should have been amazingly obvious that she wasn't blind. I told her that she was a service dog, not a seeing eye dog and then went back to signing paperwork. The woman started to tell me that she couldn't be there but a co-worker grabbed her arm and shook her head at her. That quickly, the problem was solved.
At the end of the doctor appointments we went to Krogers, to pick up M's prescription and a couple of groceries. M, Fern and I were standing in an aisle looking for cereal when a woman came around the corner and shrieked. All 3 of us jumped and she was staring fixated on Fern. I reassured her that Fern is a service dog and perfectly behaved, but the woman was nearly panicking. Mikaela took Fern into a different aisle and I tried to reassure the woman before I left. We have definitely met people who are afraid of dogs, although most react positively when they see how absolutely calm Fern is. This was the first time I've seen an adult so absolutely panicked she froze. I feel bad for her.
There was a blip on the screen of our day and it was the cashier at Krogers. We're checking out and she asks "Are you training a service dog?" This is actually a common question, so I tell her that she's not in training, she's my daughter's service dog. She looks at me and says "Why? What's the matter with her?" I've prepared for this and I've had it happen once before but it still took me aback. I looked at her and said something along the lines of "Wow, I've never been asked that before! Don't you think that's rude?" The kid looked at me and blinked like she didn't know what to say, so I followed up with "Service dogs can be trained for many things including seizure response, mobility, PSTD and more." She kind of mumbled that there are local places that bring their dogs in for training and she thought we were one of them.
It was a very very very long day, but Fern was wonderful and definitely helped Mikaela, so there are definitely good things about it.
Here's a pic of how Fern deals with doctor appointments.
We were sent up to the children's hospital to make sure that her heart was still doing well. The entire walk from the parking garage to the EKG rooms was filled with people smiling and even cooing at Fern. We've made it a policy that if we are on a schedule we don't acknowledge people with more than a smile. It's not that we don't appreciate the positive reactions, because we absolutely do. It's just that we've learned the hard way that once you give someone the opening to talk you will be there forever. They'll want to ask questions about Fern, then they'll want to tell you all about their dog and their favorite dog experiences, too. And then more people will stop to talk when they see that you are receptive to talk and it will take 15 minutes to move away.
When we got into the EKG waiting area a receptionist looked up and said "oh no". We went up to the desk and after a minute I told M to go grab a seat for us in the waiting room. As M walked away, the receptionist turned to me and said "Is that a seeing eye dog?" Given that my daughter very obviously was looking at the aquarium while she walked towards the chairs, it should have been amazingly obvious that she wasn't blind. I told her that she was a service dog, not a seeing eye dog and then went back to signing paperwork. The woman started to tell me that she couldn't be there but a co-worker grabbed her arm and shook her head at her. That quickly, the problem was solved.
At the end of the doctor appointments we went to Krogers, to pick up M's prescription and a couple of groceries. M, Fern and I were standing in an aisle looking for cereal when a woman came around the corner and shrieked. All 3 of us jumped and she was staring fixated on Fern. I reassured her that Fern is a service dog and perfectly behaved, but the woman was nearly panicking. Mikaela took Fern into a different aisle and I tried to reassure the woman before I left. We have definitely met people who are afraid of dogs, although most react positively when they see how absolutely calm Fern is. This was the first time I've seen an adult so absolutely panicked she froze. I feel bad for her.
There was a blip on the screen of our day and it was the cashier at Krogers. We're checking out and she asks "Are you training a service dog?" This is actually a common question, so I tell her that she's not in training, she's my daughter's service dog. She looks at me and says "Why? What's the matter with her?" I've prepared for this and I've had it happen once before but it still took me aback. I looked at her and said something along the lines of "Wow, I've never been asked that before! Don't you think that's rude?" The kid looked at me and blinked like she didn't know what to say, so I followed up with "Service dogs can be trained for many things including seizure response, mobility, PSTD and more." She kind of mumbled that there are local places that bring their dogs in for training and she thought we were one of them.
It was a very very very long day, but Fern was wonderful and definitely helped Mikaela, so there are definitely good things about it.
Here's a pic of how Fern deals with doctor appointments.
Monday, April 16, 2012
TSA follow up
I completely dropped the ball on posting the update on this. Sorry to keep drawing out the story!
The TSA director at the Atlanta airport had me call her so we could discuss what happened. I repeated our story and she seemed properly appalled. She agreed that several things happened that were against policy. She asked if I remembered the name of any of the employees, but of course I didn't. So she requested I send all the information I can remember about what time we went through screening, what we were wearing, etc so she could review the tapes and find out what employees were responsible. She said that there would be retraining so this wouldn't happen again.
She seemed genuinely interested in what happened and sincere about preventing this from happening again. She told me to immediately request a supervisor if this ever happened again, but the supervisor would have immediately stopped things from progressing further. Of course, I have to take her at her word, but can you imagine how much bad press this would get if the media blew up the story? Who wants to be the jerk giving a kid with a service dog a hard time?
The TSA director at the Atlanta airport had me call her so we could discuss what happened. I repeated our story and she seemed properly appalled. She agreed that several things happened that were against policy. She asked if I remembered the name of any of the employees, but of course I didn't. So she requested I send all the information I can remember about what time we went through screening, what we were wearing, etc so she could review the tapes and find out what employees were responsible. She said that there would be retraining so this wouldn't happen again.
She seemed genuinely interested in what happened and sincere about preventing this from happening again. She told me to immediately request a supervisor if this ever happened again, but the supervisor would have immediately stopped things from progressing further. Of course, I have to take her at her word, but can you imagine how much bad press this would get if the media blew up the story? Who wants to be the jerk giving a kid with a service dog a hard time?
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Toddler time again
Over the past couple of weeks, I've come to realize that having Fern is like having a toddler again. Every time we leave the house we have to bring things specifically for Fern. A treat bag, her working vest (if we go in the car), what we affectionately know as the crap-trap (I hate people that don't clean up after their dogs!) and wipes. You should never leave the house without baby wipes, just in case. And just like every parent knows, if you bring the stuff you won't need it, but the minute you forget something that's the one item you need the most.
There are other things that are toddler like. Fern likes to have things in her mouth. She doesn't chew through things (except 1 unfortunate incident with a #2 pencil), but if she can find something mouth size, she'll grab it. The good thing is that she's very good about giving it to you when you tell her to. And she doesn't like to swallow things, she just wants to carry them around in her mouth. I bet this is a retriever thing. She usually prefers her toys, but if she finds a marker, socks, or any little toy, she'll take advantage of it. I guess the good way to look at it is that we now have a very clean house, just out of necessity.
Fern really enjoys full attention on her. You want proof? Every time I pull out my laptop, she does her best to climb in my lap. She'll put her head on the keyboard, or her paws on my chest, or even flop her duck across my hands. It's not that she doesn't get enough attention or even that she desperately needs something. If I close the laptop, she blithely bounces away, so it's not that she wants to be petted. Oh no, she just wants to make sure that I don't do anything that could possibly deflect my attention from her. And heaven help Mikaela if she tries to do her homework. More than one paper has been turned in with dog slobber marks.
Don't get me wrong, she's totally worth it and it's not completely unexpected. Still, I'm torn between amusement and exasperation about a third of the time we're home. She never has a problem when she's out in public, which is most important. It just reinforces that when she is in her vest, she's a working dog, but when she's out of her vest, she's still a 19 month old dog. A relatively calm 19 month old for the most part, but she's still barely out of the puppy stage.
There are other things that are toddler like. Fern likes to have things in her mouth. She doesn't chew through things (except 1 unfortunate incident with a #2 pencil), but if she can find something mouth size, she'll grab it. The good thing is that she's very good about giving it to you when you tell her to. And she doesn't like to swallow things, she just wants to carry them around in her mouth. I bet this is a retriever thing. She usually prefers her toys, but if she finds a marker, socks, or any little toy, she'll take advantage of it. I guess the good way to look at it is that we now have a very clean house, just out of necessity.
Fern really enjoys full attention on her. You want proof? Every time I pull out my laptop, she does her best to climb in my lap. She'll put her head on the keyboard, or her paws on my chest, or even flop her duck across my hands. It's not that she doesn't get enough attention or even that she desperately needs something. If I close the laptop, she blithely bounces away, so it's not that she wants to be petted. Oh no, she just wants to make sure that I don't do anything that could possibly deflect my attention from her. And heaven help Mikaela if she tries to do her homework. More than one paper has been turned in with dog slobber marks.
Don't get me wrong, she's totally worth it and it's not completely unexpected. Still, I'm torn between amusement and exasperation about a third of the time we're home. She never has a problem when she's out in public, which is most important. It just reinforces that when she is in her vest, she's a working dog, but when she's out of her vest, she's still a 19 month old dog. A relatively calm 19 month old for the most part, but she's still barely out of the puppy stage.
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