Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 26

Last Updated on: 15th October 2013, 10:13 am

Notes from Steve: Here’s day 26. Turns out Carin messed up my email address when she sent it out. Guess I know how important I am now, hahaha. I mean of all the people to not remember…Gees. Ridiculous.

Also, Carin made it home without incident yesterday and her and Trixie are both settling in nicely. I’m sure you’ll all be hearing a lot more about how things are going as time goes on.

Ok, here’s Carin.

Hope for me, keep cheering, I’m almost there.

This morning we all got the scoop on what kind of environments our puppies were raised in. It’s so cool about Al’s dog Bahia. She was exposed to all kinds of music, which is good because Al was all worried about whether or not he could take her along when he plays music.

Then, while everyone went to Berkeley, I went with the retrains and did rounded corners, which is what I missed the other day when I was completely out of commission. Much to my dismay, the brace started sliding down and Helen was off with the regular class. So I had to hobble through the walk with an ineffective immobilizer. So we only went 3 blocks and turned around. I’m now affectionately called hop-along. This rounded corners thing is weird. Because the corners are rounded, she’ll sort of veer around the corner and you have to feel for her to straighten out. Then you have to halt her and tell her to hop up and she’ll line you up with the curb. I can feel the veer, I can’t feel the straightening out, but she seems to show me the curb, so sweet, I don’t have to fix it.

When I got back here we had a little free time, so I ran to the computer. I feel bad. People email me, and I can only write back short responses. Someone asked me some questions about technology and all I could manage was, “Ug, can I tell you about it when I get home?” People are asking me deep questions about why I want a dog, etc. and all I can say is “I’ll tell you more when I get home.” I really don’t mean to be rude. It’s just I’m checking the email via the web and I want to at least say something but I don’t have the time, or sometimes the mental energy, to say nearly what I want to say. Hope people understand.

I went to the nurse to get the brace adjusted, and she showed me how to do it myself! How liberating! It’s not really uber complicated, just a few things you need to know, and you need to remember to have patience. I’m not the best at it, but if I can’t figure it out, I’ll bug her one more time and make her watch me do it. I feel like such a slow learner. Oh well.

Lunch was good, a cheeseburger. A lady from Graduate services sat at our table and talked about how she answers the phones that graduates call when they have questions. She seemed nice. After lunch, we got presents! vet packs and dog tags! Now I have a year’s supply of heartworm preventative and a year’s supply of anti-flea/tic. Yea!

Then they all went on the miracle mile. As soon as I hear the words miracle mile, I cringe right now. So Audrey took me to go and do some island crossings. They’re weird. They train them to find the island, then you’re supposed to show them the beginning of the island and then walk to the end of the island and then finish the crossing. She talked more about patterning and all that good stuff.

I didn’t go on the night route. When Mike asked if I was going to go, a spike of pain shot through my knee and I said no. I won’t be going on the hike tomorrow either, sniff sniff. Oh well, that’s all small stuf. In 8 years or whenever my puppy retires I’ll try again. I mean how likely is it that I’ll louse up my knee again? *shouldn’t have said that, have now jynxed myself.*

Tonight I talked to my mom. She’s so sweet, I could just hug her. She’s offering to take me to the doctor the day after I get home. I could just hug her. Ah mommy.

I’ve gotta start packing. There’s a lot to pack and I need to make sure it’ll all fit.

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