Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 8

It’s Sunday. Ug. Am I ever happy it’s Sunday. I mean I still had to get up for 6:15 or so for the 6:30 relieve, but after that and breakfast, it was back to bed with me. Trixie seemed cool with that too. The poor beast is tired. I thought she’d hate tiedown, but as soon as we get near it, she just flops over. Man tiedown seems short. If that’s two feet, I’d be shocked. It seems so short!

Some things I haven’t had a chance to mention. They got me a shorter handle because with the regular handle, my arm was way, way back. I love how many things they have so they can accommodate all kinds of needs. Other people, like the 6-foot giant that is Meredeth needed a longer handle. She’s so quiet. She hums to herself all the time.

My little rascal doesn’t seem to want to wait until I say the magic words “do your business” before she’s circling, which can be a super pain because sometimes I don’t have the leash made into long leash yet. I’ll have it out of the short hook, but I won’t have it hooked into the other one.

Today, we do doggy massage, I need to do laundry, and of course I need to groom my puppers. I don’t know what else I’ll be up to. I have to send a couple emails.

I’m so happy David’s gone. He kept sneaking around. last night, Autumn and I watched the movie Erin Brockovich and he walked in and paced around a while. That was awkward.

I have to try the cong with my puppy and see if she likes it better than the ring. She just doesn’t seem to be into the tug thing.

Carmen’s diligently working on this song. I should be down there. But I’m tired and I’m waiting for a call.

Lunch is a taco and supper is…what? Um…beef strogonoff.

I’m excited because tonight the retrains come in. Apparently someone else from good old Canada will be here. I probably won’t know him, but cool. More people to meet.

Ooo! 45 minutes until massage time. I think I’m gonna grab some more z’s.

Well, doggy massage was fun. It’s all about the circular motions. At the end, she just started licking me like mad and wagging her tail. Then she turned and started licking Amy to death. Amy? Amy didn’t give her a massage! What? It was funny. Then she almost plopped her butt on my lap. That would have hurt. Then we went out to relieve and I found out my poor beast has Giardia. Now, I don’t know about dogs, but I know when humans get giardia, they’re pretty sick. So now she has to take medicine for 3 nights to cure her.

Then we decided to do laundry, and we left our beasts in our room. We shut the door,, but we didn’t tie them down. We gave them bones and took off for the laundry. When we came back, they were as good as gold…until we came into the room. Then Trixie got up, ran around and grabbed Beauty’s bone! When I came at her, she dropped it, and Then we couldn’t figure out whose bone was who’s. Autumn found one, and then I discovered that Trixie will point her little nose at what you dropped. Cool! She doesn’t nibble it, she just points. How awesome.

I know she loves me, because whenever I leave her and come back, she jumps up and wags her tail. what a doll.

Got the laundry done, and got the puppy groomed. I even brushed her teeth and everything. Yeah yeah yeah! And I met Carmen’s friends. They’re cool. I need to hang out with Carmen for a bit. She wants me to write down the words to her dog song, she says she has them all written down. what will rhyme with Sedgwick?

I need to go bug the staff for Trixie’s Giardia medicine. She’s so smart. she gets off the rug when she knows it’s feeding time. Smart puppy. We get to meet the retrains soon!

Well we met them. I can’t even hope to get all of their names right. There’s Henry whose dog got sick with some kind of cancer, there’s Craig from Toronto whose dog blew its knee out playing on some snow and ice and had to be retired, ouch! There’s Angela who can’t hear very well, there’s Kristy, there’s Lee who’s Frank’s neighbour, there’s Phil and Deborah, and I’m forgetting a couple. I’ll get them. They all seem cool. Henry and Craig sit at our table.

If I could sleep right now, I would. But we have to relieve. After that, I think I’m going to hit the snoozer.

Look at Trixie-poo chomping on her bone. Chomp chomp gobble gobble chew.

Amy is really upset. She thinks Dynamo has a bladder infection because he really really has to go and his guide work gets sloppy close to relieving times and she can’t seem to get that message across. I told her to not mince her words and ask if she and Dynamo can go down to the vets and get it fixed up. Don’t ask, don’t say maybe. Just say I would like to see the vets. If I’d done that in Ottawa, maybe I wouldn’t have gone through that saga.

Now my F key cap has fallen off my Elba. The big question is…where is it? Where did it fall off and will a dog find it…and eat it? I’ll never be able to live with myself if one of them does. I hope I find it so I can put it away.

Oh god. We finished the song, and Al’s going to play the guitar. Al, who never says anything, was whooping up a storm. It was awesome. I sang beside him so he could hear the words and he loved them. He said it was the best fun he’d had the whole time. He’s such a sweet guy, and his hearing loss really keeps him out of the loop. We turned into such idiots, barking and howling in one part of the song.

And finally here’s a mesage to those ditwads who set off fireworks directly across the street when we went to relieve…if you ever do it again…There will be at least 10 angry blind people after you. The fireworks made our dogs spazz out to varying degrees. Trusty ran inside and snorted, which sent Trixie into being spooked. We were mad. I know they didn’t know, but jesus lord. Fireworks? On a random Sunday? Ok then.

That’s it. It was a quiet day.

Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 7

It’s Saturday. Yesterday ended off on a strange note. Amy, Jill, Autumn and I went to the instructors all for different reasons to complain about David. I think we upset them because we didn’t seem to be following the communication protocol because we were all in there together, seemingly conspiring against him. But it really wasn’t that. It was more that we’d all seen things, we had talked to David about them, and he just didn’t care. So Autumn and I didn’t want to be the only ones going in there. Plus we really don’t like the way he plays with Maylee. Apparently he’ll grab her paw and twist it around behind her head until she whimpers. And he made Maylee jump on Amy’s bed. Dynamo is black too, so it looks like Amy put her on the bed and Elizabeth, the one who cleans, hates that. So we all had a meeting. Audrey was mad that we were all in there, but we had to do it this way. At least I felt like we had to. So they took notes and they’re having a meeting about David today.

Did I mention how Trixie only seems to want to play with Beauty’s things because they’re beauty’s? Silly girl.

So anyway they said we’re all supposed to stay away from David. So this morning, we all sat on the couch together so he couldn’t sit with us.

When we left the meeting we found Carmen at the piano. She was making a song for all our dogs! What a doll! She’s such a show business kind of girl. She said she’d try and hook me up with these people in Toronto who do shoots and give them tech advice on how to be blind. Sweet! She’s cool. Anyway, she’s working on this song with all our dogs’ names in it. So that was the end of last night.

This morning we were taught the basic route so we can do it independently. We had obedience stuff with doggy and toy distractions, arg! We met another instructor. She’s a float and her name is Carrie, not sure of the spelling. She’s very quiet, more like an O and M in a way, very serious. That’s cool.

At obedience, Mike was late. Can we guess why? He seemed very grave at relieving. Then David didn’t go with us downtown but we just thought it was because he was sick. We did our route,and she missed more curbs! Which makes me ancy, but it will pass…hopefully. Not Babs stuff again. Then we got back on the bus, and Mike got on and told us that for a million reasons, David was kicked out. So, yeah! He’s gone!

Alrighty, off to lunch, Trixie’s been chomping on her bone a whole bunch.

Lunch was good, a beef stew and a chocolate eclaire. Mmm. Frank tried it for the first time, and he was very much a fan. It’s good to see him in better spirits.

After lunch I groomed my baby. She loves it. I love when we’re in the downtown lounge and she snuggles up and sleeps by Val. It’s so cute. they sleep head to head, while Carmen calls me Twinks and works on the computer. She’s met the guy who plays Victor on The Young and the Wrestless and she says he’s an asshole. She has all these pictures of people who she’s met. Pretty cool lady. I guess her husband died. She’s about the same age as my dad.

Did I mention the grooming supplies we got last night? Two kinds of toothbrush, doggy toothpaste, a zoom groom, a slicker and a comb. I think that’s about it. Pretty cool grooming kit. They think of everything.

This afternoon we do Juneau so we can rework errors and such. Then I think we just discuss some basic rules for visitors etc for tomorrow, all that jazz. Can you believe it? I’ve been here a week? Wow. That’s amazing.

So this afternoon we learned about reworking errors. It’s not that confusing, just degrees. If they just miss it, you gently bring them back and say careful, but if they blow by, the no gets stronger. It’s really weird to praise her after you’ve brought her back to where you want her, but it makes sense.

Tomorrow I learn how to massage a puppy. Yea puppy massages. Tonight we learn how to clean woofer teeth. Ooo! Woofer teeth.

My dog does not like tug rings. Boohoo. Cong for you.

Oh, Frank knows sign language. Add that to the list of languages he knows.

I’m nervous about next week. They’re cutting back on the help. This is good, but scary. Am I ready to lose some of it?

Trixie’s just done something really weird. She jumped at my dresser! That was weird! She also likes to gnaw on her toenails. She looks like she’s chewing her nails in worry. It’s hillarious, but I might ask about it in case it’s anything to worry about.

I found out her poop wasn’t just watery, it was bloody! Aaa! But they say that’s normal. Ok. They say she may have caught a bug from another dog or from the kennel. But they say they’re looking better.

Did I mention we’re working the dogs out to the relieving circle and then taking the harnesses off? I don’t feel like such a lost sheep because A. I know where I’m going, and B. I can walk forward quickly and just wait for the instructors to tell me to stop. They’re wonderful. I don’t know how they handle us all so well. I feel like I’m just one of their dogs in a way, they just gently tell us when we’re wrong, and you can tell if you repeat the same mistake, because they amp up what they say. It’s hillarious. I’ll finish this one later. We have pizza for dinner. Then it’s teeth cleaning.

I’ve got other people calling that stealthy crawl across the floor that dogs do that sort of looks like they’re sprawling, but they’re actually sneaking towards something oozing. Babs used to do it and dad called it oozing, and now I have other people calling it that. Trixie is a bit of an oozer. Not as bigtime an oozer as Babs though, partly because I don’t let her, and partly because she just isn’t.

I feel like my brain is saturated. And this is just the first week. I wonder if I can absorb the basic route. I know it’s basic, but there’s so much to think of. I’m definitely going to have to have a look at it. I know I have it straight when I’m coming back. I feel saturated and unable to speak to people who aren’t here. It’s not because of snobbery or anything, I just feel I can’t get the message across because I’ve lost the ability to speak clearly because my mind is so full of stuff. So if you talk to me on the phone and I don’t seem to have a lot to say, it’s because I’m A. tired, B. having trouble stringing words together or C. both.

Aaa! David is in the computer room. He’s mad! They’re making him pay his way home! He’s mad, mad because he feels that Mike should have proof of what he’s done. So 5 people complaining about him isn’t enough? That’s half of his fellow classmates! Actually 6 of his classmates had a problem with him. But he’s mad and somehow he missed hearing that I was involved. Very bizarre. He blames Autumn for this. Uh-huh. It’s all Autumn’s fault. Forgive me for not having the spine to stand up and say actually I was involved and this is why.

One of the food servers called me a bad boy today. That was funny. A bad boy. I said I wanted to be bad and have dessert and she said, “You bad boy!” So I’m now a boy.

It’s almost time for teeth cleaning. Poor Autumn had her first breakdown. Poor girl. Trixie and I tried to console her a bit.

Tried to brush her teeth. Ug! It took everything just to get the brush in there, let alone the toothpaste. At least you just shove it in one side and then the other and that’s it. And here I thought I had to get each tooth and do it like ours. Thank god it’s not that way.

I think that’s it. I’ll try again at the computer. Let’s hope David’s not there.

Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 6

Man I was tired this morning. Autumn and I had a role reversal. I was groggy and she was awake when my alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. I stayed up until 11 which probably wasn’t smart, but I had a lot of email to respond to after I sent the mass email that said “I have my dog” to all the people who don’t get all the details of my trials and tribulations.

Man, having a dog makes you do things in a whole new rhythm. When you feed the puppy, you have to pick up the rug, so if you can, pick up the rug *before* you put the dog on tiedown. Otherwise, you have to wrestle the rug out from under your puppy. If you sit down somewhere amid the puppies, you have to find a spot for both you and your dog. I know this sounds elementary, but it’s not automatic. Everything from using a bathroom stall to getting on a bus becomes a bit of an art, and when you get tired, your artwork gets sloppy.

So today, we do obedience with food distractions. Oh good lord. Then a lecture on PR, a route, lunch which is salmon and couscous because it sounds better than the salad, then a lecture on playing with our woofers, and then we get our first woofer toys! Heehee! Then it’s another route, then it’s feed, water, relieve, or something to that effect, then we eat dinner which is…what is dinner? I can’t remember! Oh yeah it’s like Christmas dinner! Yea! Then we learn how to groom. The grooming begins. And Autumn thought I was high when I said the list of chores would get longer. Har har I think I should know. I should go for breakfast. It’s getting close to the wire.

So I wrote this whole thing after breakfast, but it went caboom. Curse you. But the main thing is now Beauty is misbehaving, and all I can say is, hahahahahahahah! Well outwardly I’m sympathetic, but inwardly I giggle.

This morning Trixie’s poop was soft, so they’re keeping an eye on it. We had obedience, and she was very distracted. So food is going to be an issue, but what can you expect, she’s a lab!

Yesterday I forgot to mention we got bait bags. They’re little kibble bags. We must call them reward bags according to frank. Mine keeps falling off the damn strap. It won’t fall off on route, but in relieving circle, in my room, anywhere where the instructor can’t see it happen it’s more than happy to do it. It got doggy drool on it because of that.

So anyway, obedience over, relieving time, and all she’d do was pee. She’d pooped earlier, but nothing this time. So off we went to the bus.

She was much better at staying sitting. Oh no, we have a new song. The law on the bus says sit sit sit. We’re goofy.

I keep forgetting to mention that we haven’t seen Tamara for a little bit. She had some kind of family emergency with her dad and the ER. We don’t know what that means.

We went out on our morning walk and it went pretty well, but the little bum missed a curb! Just charged out into traffic! We were lucky nothing was going right in front of us. So it was back to the curb, make her sit, tap my left foot and say careful! What else happened in the morning route? Not much, she just needs a lot of encouragement.

Carmen’s cool. She keeps telling me to wear sun-screen and she’s right, I should. Add that into the schedule.

So we had lunch, which was the salmon thing. It was good. The president, Bob Philips, sat at our table. He seems cool. Oh, before lunch we relieved, and no second poop!

After lunch Laurie came over to see if we needed anything at the store. We asked to rent Rain Man, but she said we couldn’t rent it because you have to have an account at the video store and they don’t. She also told us that Matt, AKA GDB’s own continued assessment Rain man, decided that he didn’t want a guide dog after all because it took too much focus. Yea continued assessments. I think they’re awesome. Laurie said it was really stressful arranging his travel stuff.

We learned about playing with our puppy-poos. They got their bones! They all chewed on them and it was the biggest mass of sound. Chew chew chew chew. They all love their bones. We learned the thing about supervising their play, and that they need some every day. Of course the poor things do. That’s fun. We relieved again and nothing but pee from my pooch. We got on the bus and went back to the lounge. There I read an email from Steve saying it’s supposed to snow! What? It’s like 25 degrees here! Like 80 F. That’s insanity.

So I went out on my route, and it was pretty good, except she was a real sniffer, and once, when she was distracted by a small dog, she made me fall on her. Jen said “look out, the sidewalk is really narrow.” Just as she finished the word narrow, down I went on her tail and Trixie went, “YIPE!” They WERE ALL WORRIED ABOUT ME, BUT i said I was more worried about her because I fell, all of me, on her tail. But they said she’d be fine. It was the finest correction ever because now she realizes how much she matters. I also know she’ll make some noise if she gets hurt.

So after the route,we relieved, and hoo boy! Trixie opened the flood gates. Icky watery poop. So now she has to eat this WD food. WD? It sounds like that would loosen her up. So it’s WD for her for a little while.

I sat down at dinner with the usual suspects, and Frank was not in good spirits. Apparently David prank called him really late last night and freaked him out. I guess Autumn told him who phoned him, and he’s some mad. I guess he told the staff about it. David, you’re working your way out sans Maylee!

Then we learned how to groom, and my puppy likes it. She tries to lunge at the brush a bit, but not a whole bunch. She let me rub her belly-welly!

She tried to escape me as I wrote this! The little ball of fire was sitting here, waiting for her WD, and David went down the hall and she ran after him, ripping herself away from me! I ran after her so fast and grabbed her and then asked if I had her. I really didn’t wanna take Maylee instead, nothing against Maylee.

Did I mention how mad Frank was at dinner and how he was all hostile with David? I think there’s trouble brewing for David. Jill, Amy, Autumn and I all have reasons for approaching the staff and telling them about what’s up. I think they’re mad at him too because of his complete lack of interest in this.

All the dogs like Mike. It’s hillarious. They’ll do anything for him. I think he’ll be the biggest distraction.

I found that fan that Barby was talking about. It sorta does sound like there’s someone lost with a cane.

Anton’s a goof. when he peed, it looked like he peed his name. Hahahah a true male.

I think that’s about it. Should be an eventful day tomorrow.

Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 5

Well, first night with the dog. It was definitely interesting. She definitely has Babs-like tendencies, like, oh say, trying to wake me up at 3 in the morning. If I showed any part of my body, she’d be up sniffing. Crazy beast. But I still managed to sleep, so that was good. We got up, and I fed her and gave her water and then she relieved like a trooper. Did them both in no time flat. She’s a very vocal dog. She snorts if you pet her a certain way and she makes little groans to express how she’s feeling. I think when she wags her tail, it’s another swisher. That’s ok. I was hoping for a thumper, but oh well, I love her, she’s cute.

Did I mention how sappy David got over Maylee? At first he didn’t want a black lab, but he loves her and he’s just taken with her completely.

Man I felt like an old Lady, going to bed before 10:00. But I was tired and had to be up at 5:45, so it had to be done.

Today we get French toast and strawberries and sausages for breakfast. Mmm. And for lunch we get boritos or a tai chicken salad, and dinner…I can’t remember. Oh. It’s macaroni or some other weird salad that I wasn’t a fan of. And dessert is tripple fudge brownies. Mm. Well, I think it’s almost time for breakfast. Damn I’m hungry.

Apparently I was hungry. I had seconds! Seconds?

Trixie’s behaving herself a bit better today. I’m very happy I have no leash burn. Yea lack of leash burn.

Today’s schedule: obedience, relieving, a real guide workout, watering, lunch, a lecture, relieving, I forget what’s next, but it’ll be busy. Oh bus 1 learns to groom tonight.

Ok gotta run. Long day. Fall down. Fall down and feel feet ache. I can’t really do stream of consciousness like the other days because I didn’t bring this thing with me. So. We had obedience, and to my surprise she was a complete angel. Not a single correction necessary.

So we went to relieve. God I hate the relieving circle. I love it and hate it. They have you walk out to this curb and then step out and walk to the middle of this driveway thing. We all have to find our own space and then you make the leash long, there are two rings on the leash. So anyway you make them a long leash and you walk back and forth and say “do your business.” But every time I go out there, I get disoriented and they have to lead me to a spot. It seems like no one else needs that. Anyway, they saw that Jill’s dog was limping, so they took him to the vet. That’s what I like to see! He apparently had this weird growing pain thing that lots of young dogs get. So we left, minus her, for the bus. Then the bus drove to this other location, not the downtown lounge so we could do a straight shot. We had to wait forever, but when Trixie and I went out, she went perfectly. She walks at a good pace for me. It felt absolutely awesome. Oh, we learned how to put on the harness today. I like the fact that the handle detaches, and it’s not made of metal, so no more gouges of the leg by the harness. So anyway, we came back, watered the puppy, it sounds like watering a plant. But we gave her water, and took her for a poop and went for lunch. Man I was hungry, felt like a whale. I met the peer counsellor. That was cool. she’s on her fourth guide dog. Wow. She’s cool.

After lunch we had a lecture about street crossings. It was nice to hear some of the same things again. After lecture, we went downtown to the lounge and did some street crossings. This morning when we did our route, the instructor also attached a leash, but this afternoon, she only attached a leash for a little while. This morning Trixie was so happy that she was wacking her tail into the harness. Maybe she is a thumper! This afternoon, though, she was lacking in confidence and was wigging out a bit. Oh well, it’s normal.

Man, two people are mildly bugging me. Frank said something really mean. I’m like sometimes I catch myself saying the stupidest things, and Frank said, “just now? Well, good that you’re catching yourself.” And Autumn keeps taunting my dog, and it’s just not cool. At one point, she kept saying, “Can you please get your dog together?” I snapped at her and said, “Can you please stop doing that? It’s really not necessary.”

After lunch, Autumn lost her leash and we couldn’t find it anywhere. It was weird. She came in, put Beauty on tiedown and then started making her bed cause we had to strip our beds and they brought the sheets back. Then she couldn’t find her leash! Turns out it was hanging from the patio door.

We had dinner, watered her, and then some of us learned how to groom, but not me yet. Bus 1 got the lecture, I’m on bus 2. Oh, I had a royal struggle with her on the bus. She doesn’t like to sit between my legs and she squiggles over so my legs end up sprawled.

I think that’s about it for today. Ug I’m tired. Must send off two days worth of logs. Oh my beast is snoring.

Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 4

Well, it’s 6:30 in the morning and I’m awake and thinking. Thinking about a lot of things. Today’s the day everything’s going to change. There’ll be no more getting up at 6, it’ll be earlier because the dogs have to be fed, watered and relieved by 6:30 which means I have to look half presentable when I go out to the relieving circle. This leash beside me will no longer be empty. A wild, somewhat devilish beast will be at the end of it. I’ve wanted this so bad, but I dread the beginning. I dread the leash burn. I dread the feeling of being exhausted from getting this dog to respect me. I’m afraid I’ll make the same mistakes all over again. I hope this new start will be more successful. Don’t get me wrong, I’m
excited, but my belly is a little flippy.

Damn it I think I’m getting a cold. My throat is slightly sore. Noooo! Well, if I do, I know where the nurse’s office is for some cold medication. Suck it, cold, you’re not going to keep me down.

Let’s check the class schedule. Did I tell you there’s a button on the phone you can press for the class schedule for the day? That is the coolest thing, cause I didn’t bring the big one they sent in the package. I was going to get Steve to email it down, but I don’t need to! I say again, um, wow. So, this morning is some more juneauing. In case I didn’t explain what Juneau is, it’s either an instructor at the end of a harness, or the instructor holding a roled up rug and you hook your leash onto it. Either way, it’s to simulate what a real dog will feel like, and you get to practice corrections on Juneau to your heart’s content and not feel guilty about hurting your puppy’s neck. Praising a rug is really odd. But now that we’re used to it, we’ll probably see a lot less of Juneau. So Juneau obedience and how to keep a well-behaved guide dog. Then it’s lunch which is shrimp creole or some kind of delly salad. No thanks! And dinner is this flank steak with noodles and peas or some kind of soup. They didn’t mention dessert. Hoo hoo hoo. I didn’t get my chocolate mousse damn it, I’ll have to make sure I get it next Tuesday. Then in the afternoon, we get told a few things and then…we get our puppy puppy puppy puppy! Eeee! Today is the day I get my new start, scary as it is. The first dinner is going to be real fun. Imagine 4 dogs at the table together. Shenanigans ahoy. And so it begins.

I was having a peek at the lectures last night, now that I figured out their weird little Victor Vybe players they lent us, at least they look like Victor Vybes. I think they’ve been through the war. The braille is all raggedy jaggedy and hard to read. But I got it going, so I guess that’s all that matters. They had these computer voices read the lectures. They sort of sound like the RealSpeak Solo voices for JAWS 8. I love how the first voice says dog. It sounds more like daawg. Y’all come back now, ya hear?

I saw David last night in the computer room. I’m so confused. He was being nice to me, which I don’t get. I’m just as much involved in this chat we had with the staff as Autumn is. He claims he skipped dinner because he didn’t like the dinner, and some stuff came up which he says he wants to tell me about tomorrow. Ok chief? I think I know what the stuff is. He still weirds me out. He’s like jeckle and hide.

There’s one thing I hate hate hate here, and it’s the showers! You turn on the hot water, and you get hit! Pinned! Against the wall by a jet of cold water. Coldcoldcold! Then once it’s warm, you barely get any cold water added to it and it’s coldcoldcold again! And they have liquid soap in the bathroom. A bar soap at our little sink, but liquid in the bathroom. No biggy, just weird. It’s almost breakfast time. I should comb my rat’s nest. I hope Autumn feels better, she wasn’t feeling well this morning, but she doesn’t want to see the nurse.

Carmen’s nickname might get changed to human pretzle because of all her yoga experience, but her back hurts today.

Interesting. In Ottawa, it was relieve, feed, relieve, but here, in the morning it’s feed, relieve, and in the afternoon it’s relieve, feed. Makes more logical sense. Now we’re in the music room, Juneau time.

I’m trying to help Carmen with her Victor Vybe. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t read braille how to find the play button. I hope I can explain it.

We learned about the high collar correction. In extreme cases, you lift the collar up under the dog’s chin and then you go sideways with the leash as if you’re holding a baseball bat. Ah the baseball bat. It looks evil. They showed us on this stuffed dog that got corrected once so hard that it took off one of his ears! Wow! That’s one hell of a correction! Yikes. Then I did obedience and did really well. Yea! off to the lounge again.

I have a new nickname, twinkle tows or twinks.

Ug they’re teaching us about moving turns. Those are tricky. You have to slow down, make the turn, and if it’s a right then you have to make a step back, and if it’s a left, you make a step forward, and in either case, you say the word a couple times and signal accordingly. Eekers. This could be tricky.

It makes me laugh when Mike says something about earning dough ray me for money. So he’ll talk about earning your dough ray me. He’s a funny guy. I think I’ve explained who Mike is, right? He’s the class supervisor. The head honcho, even though Jen is the lead instructor.

Carmen knows someone who used to be on MacGyver. Wow, she used to be in show business too.

Poor Amy’s got her ankle iced again. At least my throat isn’t so sore. This is good.

That was a nasty Juneau walk. She veered into traffic to see what I’d do. You have to stop in the middle of the street and tell him to hop up. Stop in the middle of the street? God! Say goodbye to Juneau…well they’ll probably Juneau walk us through the obstacle course. Yep, every day when we go to the buses, we walk through an obstacle course. Ug I can’t remember where to turn. You have to do it all so fast!

The IT dude is fixing the computer in the downtown lounge! They’re fast! I love them….again! Everywhere else computers are the last thing on their minds. Much love to the IT dude.

Carmen keeps calling Mike Mikey.

That lunch was good. I ate it all, and a slice of pineapple upside down cake. Mm. Sweet. I got to talk to Barby. That was cool.

So now I’m sitting here waiting for lecture to begin. I left my cane in the room. I played taps for the cane. Har har. Frank, get here, you’re holding up the little lecture before I become the proud handler of a guide woofer.

Looks like we’re starting without Frank. They’re going to tell us all the names of our dogs, and then they’ll take us back to our rooms and then take us to meet our dogs! Then they take us back and we play with our dogs and then do heeling practice! My belly is woozy. They’ve already set out our doggy beds and dishes etc. Oh come on start giving us our dog names!

Finally, the names begin. Here they are. I get a female black lab and her name is Trixie! Crash gets a female yellow lab named Estelle. Carmen gets a female black lab named Val. Bernard gets a male yellow lab named Trusty. Jill gets a male yellow lab named Storm. Autumn gets a female yellow lab and her name is Beauty. Frank gets a male yellow lab named Anton. David gets a female black lab named Maylee. Amy gets a male black lab named dynamo. Al gets a female black lab named Bahia. Meredeth gets a male yellow lab named Sedgewick. These are the coolest dogs ever. I’m shaking. I can’t breathe. I hear footsteps.

I got my dog! She’s 55.5 pounds and 22 inches tall. What a cutey. Her Birthday is April 9. She’s got a lot of spunk. I had to show her how to heel. Not too much I certainly don’t have leash burn, but she was a wild beast.

We relieved, and at first, they pick it up for us. Wow I feel rusty. forgetting how to leash relieve. She went like a trooper. Both times. I don’t have to worry. This is so much better than the Ottawa way. They’re out there with you and they tell you if she went and what she did.

Gotta go to the dining hall now.

Well, Trixie’s full of tricks, but she’s not nearly Babs level. She likes to whine, so we’re working on that. I’m tired, but I have 0 leash burn. This is a step up. She likes Dynamo. That’s for sure. She through herself at him, so Amy says she’s a seductress.

We got her water and she drank like mad. And then she relieved again. Peed and the other. Wow, this dog’s got a lot of pee.

I managed to send off the emails. A few rejected recipients, but most of them I can let know another way. Did I mention how much she likes to
whine?

Poor Autumn’s getting sick. I’m worried about her. In other news, I feel like the sore throat is worse. Oh well, it’s nothing major.

Alright, crash time, not as in fall down go boom, but more like fall down and sleep like a log. Oh one last thing. Frank hates it when I say holy crap. He says it’s unbecoming of a young lady. Crap? I could be saying far worse. But whatever floats his boat, I guess.

Alrighty, gotta set the alarm earlier, gotta start taking puppy out to relieve, and tomorrow I have to strip my damn bed too. Ug of all the days to need to do that. Alright, queue the z’s.

Spammers And Bankers And Rage, Oh My!

So, how’s everybody today? Hopefully good. I’m doing ok. A little sluggish, but that’s alright, I’ll get over it eventually. Maybe writing might help get me going, so I figure that’s what I’ll do until I run out of things to talk about or get sidetracked by something else.

Everybody keeps asking me if I miss Carin yet and if it’s weird around the house without her here. The answers to those questions are yes and it’s getting there. I don’t mind being by myself, I used to live alone and for the most ppart it was a pretty good experience. I’m the type of person that enjoys my own company and doesn’t have much trouble staying amused, so not having other people around isn’t something that bothers me much. Where it gets weird is knowing that I don’t live alone and that the person I share my space and my life with isn’t just out for the afternoon or a day or 2, but for a whole month. Every routine I have is slightly different. For instance, when I sit down to have dinner and watch the news there’s nobody to talk about the day with, not to mention that I have to get used to cooking for just one person again. There are countless little things like that that I’m having to adjust to, and the funny thing is that by the time I get myself into that groove it’ll be time for Carin to come home and I’ll have to adjust all over again.

Speaking of Carin, I’m glad everybody seems to be enjoying her updates. She’s gotten a few nice emails and I’ve even gotten 1 or 2 thanking me for putting them up, so it’s nice to see that people are getting something out of them. Yesterday was officially dog day for her, but I’ll let her break that news on her own whenever the next update gets here. From what she says and what I’ve always heard, now is the time when things start really getting crazy, so if the updates aren’t as timely as they’ve been up to now, don’t be at all surprised.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all of this talk from Jack Layton and the NDP about how unfair ATM fees are. He’s pretty much come right out and said that the charges banks force consumers to pay to access their own money is one of the top issues facing the Canadian public, and that we’re all up in arms about it. My question is a simple one. Is this guy serious? This is a top issue? We’re up in arms? All of us? Who is he talking to? I’ve never in my life heard a person complain about these things. Well ok, to be fair, a lot of people complain and rightfully so about the privatley owned machines in a lot of places that can charge whatever they want and usually do to an outrageous extent. Those things are evil and can burn in hell as far as I’m concerned, but the solution to that problem is easy. If you don’t want to pay a $5 surcharge to take out 20 bucks, don’t. If you have absolutely no choice and you need money at that exact moment then I feel bad for you, but otherwise, the fact that you’re getting gouged is your own problem until the government steps in and tells the people who own these things to knock it off.

But those aren’t even the machines that Layton is concerned about. The one’s he’s targeting are the ones owned by the big banks. He feels that there’s no need to levy what is essentially a convenience fee or what I’ve heard called a tax on the poor when a person uses a machine owned by one bank to take money out of an account at another. Again, simple question time. Why not? A system that allows me to use my Royal Bank card to get money out of a CIBC machine at 3 in the morning on a Sunday is definitely what I consider convenient, and I accept the fact that I need to pay for that. Nothing that easy is ever free, and this is no different. Keeping a network as large and sophisticated as that one running as well as it does can’t possibly be a cheap thing to pull off, and somebody somewhere has to foot the bill. Layton makes it seem as though people don’t have a choice about paying these fees, and that’s just not true. I’m sure that somebody somewhere doesn’t have a choice and again I feel bad for that person, but most of us have options. if the fees are more than you can handle, then don’t use other people’s machines. Wait for your bank to open, walk inside and stand in line like we had to do back in the good old days. I know that for some people a dollar or 2 can make a lot of difference, but that doesn’t change the fact that nothing pays for itself, and if we weren’t paying the buck at the machine, that same charge would be hidden somewhere else. Either way, we’re still paying for it, so we might as well pay at the pump so to speak.

But if you want to talk about taxes on the poor, then why not target the whole idea of service charges? Those things are a tax on the poor if I’ve ever seen one, especially that minimum balance bullshit they came up with. That’s ridiculous. by opening an account, you agree to always keep X number of dollars in it, and if you don’t, we’ll take more of your money away from you making it even harder for you to get back up to where we’d like you to be. How does that make any sense? The way I look at it, the more money you have, the bigger the favour the bank is doing you by looking after it and the more you should be paying them to do it. You’d think that a lot more time and energy would go into looking after thousands of dollars than would go into hanging onto a few hundred bucks that Jerry who works down at Subway managed to stash away somehow. It’s a bigger responsibility, much in the same way that watch my baby for the afternoon while I go out and do a few things is a bigger responsibility than hold my coke for a second while I find my glasses. You can charge by the hour for babysitting, but nobody ever gets tossed a 5 for hold this. Why should this be any different? Lay the charges on the people who can afford them, the ones with those high interest accounts with lots of money in them who need more attention. it just makes sense. You can say that money is money, but that’s not the way banks look at things. if you’re broke, they want nothing to do with you and for some reason they see fit to lay all of the charges on you. Why not look into regulating that attitude and forcing banks to charge the people who are using more resources the appropriate rates for them? it seems to me that would be a much better use of government’s time and energy than going after the machines.

I think spammers are starting to get a little bit desperate. I just got one that said “For God sake don’t pass this bye!” Hopefully that means business isn’t going so well.

I mentioned the other day that I saw something that got me very upset. I had a person ask me about it and I was thinking about posting it anyway, so here goes.

Some of you might have noticed little references here and there over the last few months to some family situations I’ve been going through. What happened was my dad and one of my grandmothers both had strokes about a month apart. My grandma is back at home and doing quite well now, but my dad wasn’t so lucky. He’s back home too, but he’s only got the use of one arm and one of his legs isn’t quite right either. he’s also not totally with it mentally because of some brain damage he suffered at the time.

Ok, now that you’re all caught up, here’s the story.

When I was visiting family a couple of weeks ago, my sister and I decided to pay him a visit to see how he was doing and chat with him for a little. While we were there, he went to the fridge and offered me a beer. It’s at this ppoint that I need to back up again and fill in an important detail. My dad has been an alcoholic for longer than I’ve been alive, and I’m just a few years away from being 30. So the fact that he had booze in his house was a bit of a concern considering that it was a major factor in why he’s in the shape he’s in now. I took him up on his offer figuring that he only had the couple that we saw in the fridge. I thought that if I drank one it would leave one less for him to play with, and hey, who am I to turn down free beer? In retrospect I really should have known better, because if experience has taught me anything over the years it’s that there’s no such thing as *a* beer where dad’s concerned. And sure enough, he asked my sister to go down and bring some more up from the basement. Yes, the basement. A steep flight of stairs. A steep flight of stairs that separates a partially paralyzed stroke victim with a drinking problem from the nectar of the gods. Gee, I don’t see what could possibly go wrong.

that by itself is bad enough, but you also have to take into consideration that dad is pretty much housebound at this point unless somebody takes him out. That means that somebody else is the cause of this. Some as yet unidentified asshole, probably one of his drinking buddies, thinks that they’re being helpful by getting cases of beer for the poor guy and hiding them downstairs so that people won’t find out. What kind of mental retardation does it take for that to seem in any way logical? You don’t have to answer that, it’s a rhetorical question. I know exactly what kind it takes because I spent my life growing up around it. But even though I’m used to it, it still hurts just a little bit each time I see it in action.

I hate to end things on such a down note, but I’m out of things to write about and I’m getting really really hungry. The joy and fun will return very soon though, so don’t you worry. Thanks for reading this all the way to the end if you made it that far. I’ll be back later.

Odd Combination Of Things Number 4

Before we get started, here’s a quick update/correction. The
story in Things Number 3
about the
drunk who said a unicorn was driving his car when he had his accident
turns out
not to be quite accurate.
There was no unicorn, just misunderstood slang that came out of communications from the prosecutor’s office. Apparently anybody who has a stupid excuse for what happened is said to be using the “unicorn defense.” This guy definitely qualifies, having told police in various statements that he had a broken left leg, panicked and had even fallen asleep before deciding to blame the incident on those damn woman drivers and pin the whole thing on his girlfriend. Not bad, but the unicorn thing makes for a much better story.

Ok, now let’s have some fun. Just remember that objects on the blog may be less online than they appear.

*Next time you commit a crime, forget trying to make any sort of spectacular escape from the scene. Seriously, take your time. Grab some booze, have a snack, catch a bus. hey, it worked for
this guy,
who the police still can’t find.

*
this
is an interesting look at 10 of the worst acts of hockey violence in history. I love the descriptive writing. CBC always does a great job on these retrospective type things.

*
This story about the Waitakere City Council in New Zealand taking itself to court for failing to get proper permits before moving 6 homes
almost didn’t make it here because it sounded too ridiculous to be true, but the large number of official looking press releases and court filings I found while looking it up combined with the fact that there are governmental elements at work here seem to back up it’s truthfulness.

*Elton John may be banned from performing on the island of Tobago in order to
protect residents from being turned gay.

*What in the world could be causing this explosive gas? Is it the Mexican food, or could it be
the golf ball-sized grenade I stuffed up my dumper
before they hauled me off to jail yesterday?

*
Valet Crashes Car Into Hospital, Hits Car’s Owner
And to top it all off, the owner of the car was an amputee in a wheelchair. The valet is now being charged with careless driving, which I’m not sure is fair considering that the car was built for use by a handicapped person and not laid out like a normal vehicle.

*It’s official, British governments are certifiably batshit nuts. the latest scheme, which comes from the Ealing town Council, will see small cameras installed in items such as cans of beans and building bricks to
help the government catch people who aren’t putting their garbage out when they’re supposed to.

*Good idea: Teaching your 9-year-old child about sex. Bad idea:
having it while she watches you in the hopes that she’ll figure it out.
The girl’s mother and her boyfriend were allowed to plead guilty and receive probation rather than jail time in order to spare the kid the pain of going through a long trial.

And to add one more strange element to the story, according to the Reuters article, the judge in the case was named Jeremiah Jeremiah Jr. that means that there has to have been a Jeremiah Jeremiah SR at some point, which is a frightening thought. Seriously, how many guys have you met in your life named Bob Bob? Probably none, because I’d like to think that most people wouldn’t do that to their child.

*
German man chainsaws house in two in divorce split
I honestly don’t understand why we don’t hear stories like this more often. It seems like something that should happen more than it does.

*
I think this guy might be just a little bit paranoid, how about you?

*It’s no wonder kids don’t want to participate in sports anymore, what with crazy parents like these who
karate kick small children for messing up during soccer games
and
throw their children’s wrestling opponents in the air because their kid is losing.
In the second case, the parent *was* one of the coaches.

*What the heck, le’ts go for the insane parent trifecta and throw in a story about 3 members of an Italian family, the father and grandfather among them, who
beat up a school principal
because they didn’t like the grades their kid was getting or the school’s new ban on cell phones.

I think that’s enough for today. As always, feel free to send things in, we like that sort of thing around here.

By the way, I’m glad that everybody has been enjoying Carin’s guide dog trip updates. there’s a new one right below this post for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.

I’ll be back with something later on, so I’ll talk to you then.

Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 3

Grrr. There’s never enough time. Never! Last night, after I wrote that entry, I went to send it to the computer, but Autumn ran back to the room and said lock the door lock the door! So I did, apparently she was running from David! He’d ordered pizza, apparently he and Amy have hollow legs. Anyway, he called the pizza guy a spic, which pissed off everyone around him. This morning, if I can catch Autumn, we’re going to talk to the instructors about this David probem. We already spoke to him about having respect for our space and it got us exactly nowhere. Also, he was threatening to tackle Rain Man just for fun. There’s something wrong with that boy. I don’t want to live in fear for the rest of my training.

Autumn and I just laid down and talked for a long time. I didn’t nod off until close to 12. But oh my body had me awake at 5 for some unknown reason.

I’m happy. I’ve finally tamed that devilish alarm clock. God damn that thing is like a rebel guide puppy. It has a mind of its own! But I now know how to set it so if David plays with Autumn’s power bar it’s no big deal, I’ll just set it for her later and show her how. I love the comradery that happens at guide dog schools. We all help each other. I helped Frank with his phone, Amy helped me with the alarm clock, I love it. Everybody helps everybody.

Oh, I like Bernard now. He’s hillarious. Apparently the reason he was sorta creepy was he had a fever when he got here! The poor guy. Now we can’t shut him up. But I llike him.

David is in here again. I guess we’re not talking to the god damn instructors! Eeeee! I’m going to lose my mind. Going to lose it! Lose it! Real soon! Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I forgot to mention the dinner chimes. They ring these pretty chimes when it’s time to eat. I guess that way nobody can say that they missed dinner cause they didn’t know.

This morning they fed us pancakes and sausages. Mmm.

Tonight we’re having yoga. They’re going to teach us stretching exercises to prevent shin splints. Cool! Yoga! Isn’t that the most awesome thing?

Almost time for class. Damn damn damn when are we going to deal with this? She claims he’s going to respect boundaries. Let’s see.

Mmm. Today’s lunch is a club sandwich and I’m trying the shrimp salad for dinner.

This morning we’re doing commands and then we’re going to Juneau in downtown San Rafael. Yee ha, man on a leash time! At least the locals are used to it. I just learned how to do the formal recall correction. Pretty straight forward. The dog starts screwing around, you just yank it back past your leg cause that’s where you want him to go! That went really well. I think I’ve got all the obedience commands down. Sweet. Went out on my first Juneau harness walk, sans rug, thank god. Ick that would be bad. Those rugs are all ripped to hell. Man it feels good to be walking with a harness again. We got to try the 3 hop ups, one for speed up, one for come on, doggy, focus, and one for ok we’re close to something but I can’t quite reach it. I think I’ve got them down. It’s all about the intonation. Got the lefts and rights straight, har har. I think I’m starting to know where I’m going. Gimme my doggy now! Gimme gimme gimme!

Autumn *says* we’re GOING to talk to the instructors. She claims she didn’t really want him in the room this morning. I can’t keep up with this, and I told her so. God damn. Everyone else I love to death.

Sylvia’s wrist is still bugging her, poor woman. I guess she’s 77 years old. Um, wow. Amy fell! Ouchers! She’s now crash junior. We’re droppin’ like flies! Don’t get booted Amy! Please please please!

Lunch was good. I liked the clam chowder. I didn’t get to try the chocolate mousse though. Oh well, we’ll get it for supper.

We went and talked to Jen about David and they said they’d talk to him. Should be interesting.

Now it’s lecture time. Controling your guide dog. Ok that was embarrassing. I fell asleep for a second. Um, that was a woops. Then I did more obedience and I think I’ve got it. It’s sit, down, stay, then formal recall where you make him stay and then you make him heel. So I think we’re going to the downtown lounge for more juneauage.

Uh-oh. They just called David to the office. This could be awkward. Oh I hate the way my body gets when it’s stressed. Hope there’s time to visit the john.

Well we went over to the lounge, and I was able to help Carmen with her email. I went out on another Juneau walk with more lefts in it, and wow, I could go faster!

David is officially an asshole. The guy went and laid on Amy’s bed because we said he couldn’t come back into our room. What a class act.

Mm dinner was good. Shrimp salad and chocolate eclaires. I’m an idiot though. I asked for iced tea and forgot that it’s just cold tea. *Ug*! There’s a note to all Canadians. It’s not your iced tea! And I was even warned! God I’m an idiot head.

Now David’s refusing to come to dinner. Like what the huh? He’s a strange individual.

Wow, it looks like a short update today. There’s not much left to happen, just yoga. But who knows? Maybe I’ll run into Seizure Augustus, or Seizure Augimpus as she is now calling herself because of her little fall. She seems to be fine now. I’m worried about Sylvia though. She’s at the doctors. That’s never good. I have to return Carmen’s pen. Autumn wanted to write down all the commands and stuff so we teamed up and wrote them down. Man I’m jealous of Al. He brought his own laptop with wireless access. If I had that I could email these from anywhere and not have to use the public computer at specified times.

My feet really cry out when I’m standing in the halt position. I hope that gets better.

Is there anything else I can say? Damn it I went back to give Carmen her pen and I missed the phone! Aboo! Please leave a message, please please, I’m on my knees! Voicemail? Lemmy check! No message damn it oh no! Let’s see if it was mom and dad. They never leave messages, the silly ones. I have no caller ID here! Arggy! I’m listening to the silly spanish collect call music. Ah come on hurry up and reject the call and then phone me back, ok? Come on! I don’t have long now. Well it wasn’t mom and dad. Arg must go to yoga now. Must pee first.

That was good, but I didn’t make it to pee. It’s hard to lie still and relax with a full bladder. But that was good. My muscles feel much looser. I finally met another of the continued assessment girls, her name is Nancy and she has one hell of a lot of arthritis. Poor girl. But I’ve never seen yoga perform such a miraculous transformation on someone. She went from “oo ee aaa” to “this feels much better!” and the instructor asked her if it really felt better, and she said yes! Wow! How cool is that? There I go again.

I met Nicole, the other continued assessment girl, and she has the cutest little voice. She said we were laughing so hard they could hear us down in the retrain wing.

I don’t think dear old Matt is getting a guide dog. We saw him trying to lead a puppy in harness back out into the driveway without help. Oops. The dog’s name is Martin. Wouldn’t it be funny if you knew a Martin like I do, and then you had a dog named Martin? Oh boy.

I think that’s about it for today. Woe! A short day! Holy crap! Or at least a short summary. Tomorrow we get our four-legged woofer friends.! I’m going to try and send this now, maybe it won’t look as bad as last time.

Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 2

Well, I survived the first day. This morning was an interesting start. Amy had a seizure and Jill had to yell for help. I was in the shower when
it happened. I miss everything.

Frank’s cool. He can speak many languages. So he makes a point of speaking to the kitchen ladies in Spanish or some kind of philipino dialect. I like Frank. He seems nice. We don’t like Dave. He creeps us out, Autumn and I. We locked our door and he rattled it this morning! Gotta go to the dayroom. I wish Autumn would come.

They’re taking meal orders. mmm ravioli and chili. or some tuna salad or salad with blue cheese. we see Tamara and now Audrey and Jessica. Wow everybody loves gdb. Ooo Mike Delross. Uh-oh code of conduct time. god communication protocol again? ug. Ooo! Yoga tomorrow. I just met Sue…Sullivan, and Laurie. She’s a sweetheart. Man they take care of us, shopping, checking the mail, all that good stuff. Man there are a lot of churchies.

We have our leashes now! Heehee! I feel like such a non-newb. Tamara has a chihuahua. All these extra dogs. Ooo now we have Juneau the rug. I did my first heeling. And the damn slip collar. Live rings, dead rings, aaaa! But I think I got it, just one feels right, and the other one feels W R O N G! The way it works is there’s this collar, and you have to slip the chain through one ring and the other ring goes onto the leash, and you have to put the collar on the right way or you have no correction room. It’s hard to explain but I think I have it. Wow don’t mess with Carmen. She ripped Juneau’s head off.

In day room. waiting for puppies that aren’t our puppy. I got to heel a puppy. His name was Morgan. He was a wild one, I had to give a lot of corrections just to get him to heel. Man I can see how I let Babs away with murder. Now I got to walk Tania. What a cool dog. I didn’t have to give her much of a correction at all. But my corrections are all off kilter. Too hard when they should be softer, too soft when they should be harder. Silly Tania got her paws all caught in the leash. What a cutey. It’s hard watching them leave with the puppy. They even have an O and M! They have everything!

Sad news! Amy’s going home! She had a seizure and you have to be seizure-free for six months before you can come here, I guess, and boom! she has to go home! I don’t get that. Seizures happen and you never know when, so how can you get excluded? Plus, people get seizure dogs, so it’s not that you can’t take care of a dog. What the hell? so we’re chipping in to get her a stuffed puppy and we’re brailling a note. I feel like crying, I have to figure out a time to go see her, the poor woman. I really liked her.

I’m going to have to use ye old communication protocol real soon I think on David. He’s always in our room. But he is nice. He’s just uber annoying, and he’s never gone. I know his room-mate is Bernard, so who wants to go there, but e gads does he have to be all over Autumn? Gonna have to think a bit to figure out how to approach it. He really is not a bad guy, I don’t think he’s evil or anything, but he creeps me out. We even locked our doors because we were afraid of him. And he rattled our door, I think it was a joke, but oy yoy yoy.

Amy gets to stay! she gets to stay she gets to stay she gets to stay!
Gotta talk to her later.

I just did some obedience work with juneau the rug dog. Now I correct too hard. Damn you Babs what have you done?

Ok, so much to catch up on. Where do I begin? We ran over with Laurie from admissions and got Amy a stuffed dog. Then we ran back and went to the downtown lounge and we all walked around holding the end of this PVC pipe thingy that they called a modified sighted guide tool. They took the other end and then we read traffic and aligned with it. I apparently rocked, which is a miracle because my instructor used to say “I don’t want to have to line you up like a chess piece.”

Oh, I forgot to mention we got a tour of the downtown lounge, and how cool is that? It has:
A kitchen with a water dispenser. Here I was buying a water bottle.
Computers that apparently have minds of their own because they spontaneously forgot they had authorizations. Oh well, they will heal.
A TV room, and I think that’s about it.

So we came back from that, brailled out Amy’s note and put it in the bag, and oh my the fun began.
We were all in Amy’s room to give her her gift. She gave us all hugs. She is the coolest woman. I have to have a long, long, long chat with her. I have much to learn, she is the wise one. Anyway, when we were all in there, this dude charged in and started talking to us all really fast. I can’t simulate it except to say that he reminded me of Rain Man when he goes “two minutes to wapner…gotta get my boxer shorts…K-Mart.” So he’s going at us really really fast, and we realize that he was one of the continued assessment dudes. Oh boy. I think he’d confuse the dog. I can just hear it. Juneau left right sit down stay. Holy crap what am I supposed to do? So we’re all doubled over because he’s so hillarious. And we all vowed that before class was out, we would watch Rain Man because of him.

And then stuff started to go straight to hell. Not in a bad way, but a look how immature we can get kind of way. We started nicknaming each other. Amy became seizure Augustus because that’s what she named the stuffed puppy that we gave her. I became rubber gills..well..long story time. I said that the Ottawa school was held together by spit and rubber bands, which made Autumn laugh and laugh and laugh, and then I said I was stuffed to the gills after eating Chili and pear crisp, and she thought that was hillarious. I was going to be Canadian fish, but she thought rubber gills was funnier. Ok, so we’ve got Amy and I. Frank became drank because that’s what they wrote in his braille card at our seat assignment. By rights, I should have become Crin, but I’m not complaining. A few braille mistakes won’t kill me. So Frank is now Drank, or Jrank depending on what it says. This guy is hillarious. He’s so easy to make turn red. Now, the rest of them took longer. Autumn became Heave ho because…long story. David decided to show his assholery in more vivid colour today by attempting to football tackle Autumn for no good reason. Oh yeah, this dude keeps dropping change all over our room, which could get us in trouble when puppy comes. Oh, we spoke to him, it’s gotten us nowhere, and now this apparent physical violence is not sitting well with me. Autum and I are coming to see the instructors. Anyway, I called Autumn a human projectile because he was threatening to throw her over the entertainment centre. So then I said something about heaving her, and I was like, not heave like puke, heave like heave ho! So she’s Heave Ho! Jill is Rec because…long story again. When we first met Matt, AKA Rain Man, he said something about not liking the south because there were way too many red-neck evangellical christians out there. And we said something about someone and Jill said, “Oh lord!” and the way she said it, it sounded like she was one of those. So she’s now Rec. Ok this is mean. Sylvia is now crash because she fell today pretty good and messed up her wrist. Carmen is Ave Maria because she sings all the time. Meredeth is smoky the bear because, oh my god our innocent little Meredeth smokes! I saw Bernard, who we now call snooze, getting a smoke from her! Yeah you can guess why we call Bernard Snooze. Al is Mouse. And David? Well? He’s Pizza Booky. He was Booky because he was being a book nird and not talking to anyone, so we called him booky because it had a double meaning, and then he ordered pizza, and so we called him pizza booky. He’s also been known as Jingle bells because Matt called him that when actually it was one of the staff’s puppies going by. He was called Elvis because he can do a pretty good Elvis impression and did he have another nickname? I don’t think so. So we have now nicknamed our class the class of oceans 11. We don’t know what happened to no. 12, but oh well.

What else can I say? Oh! Two things.

1. Everybody here loves dogs, I mean not just likes dogs loves them. Has puppy raised them, has career change dogs, I have never seen a more dedicated group of people from the admissions staff right down to the kitchen staff. Um, wow.

2. I had a little interview thingy with all four instructors where they asked me if there was anything else they needed to know when it came to matching me with woofer. I said I liked working with the second puppy better because she didn’t require a lot of correcting. They all had puppies in there and the whole room smelled like woofer. I asked them questions about how to prevent the dog from licking people’s coffee cup, and the chewing thing, and they said they’d give me a gental leader! I love these people.

So, Wednesday will be the beautiful day. Now, must transpose this, and fall down to sleep.

Carin’s Guide Dog Diary: Day 1

Holy crap it’s happening. I’m on the plane. I’m on the plane I’m on the plane! Man oh man what an early rise this morning. I’m so glad I packed yesterday afternoon. It was such a relaxed day yesterday. I had everything planned out. I was actually able to enjoy having mom and dad around. It’s funny. For this trip, I really didn’t want mom and dad to drive me to the airport. I thought I wouldn’t be able to say proper goodbyes to people, pack, etc. but because I started packing on Friday, I really didn’t have to do much packing once they got here. I could just hug them. I could hug grandma too, she sent me some money! Sweet! Much love to Grandma. I mean I’d already taken out the American money and all that, but unexpected dough is always a pleasant surprise. Anyway, I got all packed and got up this morning and didn’t have to do much last-minute preparing. Ok, this was funny. We left at 5 in the bloody morning. My flight was at 8:40. That should have given us enough time to have a nice
breakfast at this truckstop that dad likes, right? Wrong! Bzzz! Sound the buzzer. Not if you’re my dear old dad and decide you’re going to try and take a shortcut to Highway 25. We end up wandering aimlessly around *guelph*! for a half an hour. So guess where we ate breakfast? At the airport! Ouchers on the pocketbook. I couldn’t believe it when, at around 5:30, dad says, um we’re at Victoria road. Oo there’s York Road. Uh, chief? that’s in Guelph still! *arg*! And that was the part I was the least worried about. I figured mom and dad knew how to find the airport. Arggy.

We get to the airport, and holy crap this group of two in front of us take forever to get processed, and we managed to lose dad! He went to the washroom and took forever to find us again. I was starting to worry the group in front of us had been flagged as a security threat they were taking so long. Well they weren’t getting shoved over to the side, so that was good. Anyway, at 7, we finally get seen, they stamp my passportt and look at my ticket and give me a bording pass. They tell me I should get my butt back to the waiting area by 7:30 and they’ll help me through. So we wolf a breakfast so fast and then we go use the washrooms. So they take me back to the waiting area, and we twittle our thumbs for another 20 minutes! Gees! I would have eaten much slower if I’d known we had 20 more minutes. Then they started taking me through the various gates, etc. and holy crap I felt like the hot potato in a game of, well, hot potato. First dude leads me through and this scary woman asks me where I’m going, but starts to smile as soon as I tell her I’m going to get a guide woofer. Then, they pass me off to a security dude who leads me through this area that’s beeping and beeping and beeping. I have to take all my stuff that I’m taking on the plane with me off. So that’s this elba doodad, my fanny pack, my purse, my coat, and even my cane! I told them the elba was a computer, and I didn’t even get asked to turn it on. Awesome! Then I get everything back and the security dude hands me off to this woman who hoofs me through a gate almost to the plane, and then two flight attendants decide to help me. It’s really weird watching your luggage get put on the belt. After every leg of the journey and each time I was passed off to someone else, it took everything not to ask if they had my bags. Not that I’m complaining about how they treated me or anything, it was just a lot of pass-offs. They were pretty cool, telling me how many rows back the washrooms were, where the life vest was god forbid I ever need it, the jazz about the oxygen masks. I’m in a window seat. There’s a dude two seats over in the aisle seat. He seems pretty nice. We haven’t said much to each other, but he was cool enough to help me with the jammed final section of my stupid cane. Ha ha, cane, your days are numbered once again! I can’t believe this is actually real. It’s 10:15 now, so 7:15 California time. I still have lots of flying time. I wish this stupid headache would go away. It’s not horrible, but it’s annoying. Luckily I brought some Advil with me. Man I hate saying goodbye. I suck at it. I always feel like I’m being rushed off elsewhere. The goodbye was so quick with mom and dad. I said I’d let them know when I was at San Rafael. Those poor souls, having to drive home now. They’ll be driving about as long as I’ll be flying. I’m so excited! Heehee!

Man there was this weird older lady in a wheelchair. While we were waiting to be the hot potatos in the great old hot potato game, she kept referring to all of us as the cripples. Ok, that’s one way of putting it. My poor confused parents. They somehow thought I was flying directly into San Rafael even though I’d been telling them it’s San Francisco! It’s San Francisco! They kept asking people where the flight to San Rafael was. Oy yoy. But I love them. God the airport was a zoo. Just to get from parking to the airport was all screwy, and then we had to find the floor we were supposed to be on, which wasn’t exactly easy. But at least finding food wasn’t hard. They had pictures of knives and forks directing us there.

I didn’t get a chance to get headphones. I was really sleepy when they were coming around with headsets. Apparently you get to keep them now. Allrighty then. Poor Steve, having to share a rented headset with someone else. That would have sucked balls.

I’m so restless. I know I still have just under four hours to go, but I’m so restless. It’s funny. If I’m riding the bus, I’m not nearly this bad. But then again, I’m never riding the bus to woofer school.

God I hate being short. The call button is out of my reach. Not that I need anything right now, but if I did, I have to bug the dude two seats over and ask him to push it for me. Stupid shrimpiness.

I hope poor Steve got some sleep. When you have to get up at 4 to catch a plane, that’s one thing. When you’re just awake because everyone else is running around getting ready to leave, and you have a stupid cold, that just sucks. There’s a baby on the plane who isn’t very happy. Not fun, not fun at all. Guess there isn’t much else to say yet. I’ll say more when I get settled in my room. I wonder who my room-mate’ll be. Stop hurting, you stupid head! Ok, I must be crazy, talking to my own head. Hopefully no one’s bored yet. Now maybe I’ll go write a list of questions I want to ask the instructors. Well that didn’t take long. I swear I had more questions. I’m sure I’ll think of them. Man I hope the time-change doesn’t mess with me. With all the sleep deprivation I’ve had, I hope I sleep like a baby. Oh, guess who I get to meet tomorrow? Sue…Sullivan? She said I meet her tomorrow. Man it was cool calling and getting my phone number. They say when we arrive in San Francisco it’ll be 20 degrees! How cool is that? Man over the last week I’ve been saying How cool is that? a lot. Should stop doing that. Maybe I should stop writing for a while until I have something useful to say. only 3.5 hours to go. Gick I’m restless. Damn I’m tired. Must remember my cane when the flight is over. It had to be stowed. It must be the relief that this is actually happening. I was actually able to have a nap. Slept for a half-hour. Man the lady who does the French has trouble. Oh, the weirdest thing happened when I was getting on the plane. One attendant asked the other if I could read French braille. French braille? What the? I said it wasn’t my native tongue. What did they have in French braille that they wanted to give me. That was weird. Oh crap I wonder if the seatbelt sign is on. Well nobody’s telling me to shove this underneath. Ooo we’re supposed to arrive early. 20 minutes early. Hope the instructors will be there. Only 2.5 hours to go then!

Man I feel like a fool. They came around offering drinks and I asked for a snack, fully intending to pay, but they somehow teefed a little bag of cornchips from the first class snack stash. Oops. And they not only got one for me, but they got one for the dude sitting in the aisle seat of this row. I feel bad, I haven’t spoken a word to him. For some reason I’m shy. All I know about him is he likes to read, from the amount of page-flipping I’ve heard. 55 minutes to go. come on come on come on! Man I wish I knew what to do with my garbage. I don’t want to set it on the tray like some kind of shlub. But this isn’t like the bus where there’s a garbage bag beside me. My head still hurts damn it.

Well, I’m off the plane! I’m now sitting in the bus. I’m the only one here. We arrived early. It was lucky I wrote down the instructor’s cell number. I phoned her and said hey dude we’re early. She’s like ok come to baggage claim. My god that time at baggage claim was the longest ever. But finally both my bags showed up, safe and sound. So she led me out here to this bus and gave me a sandwich, a cookie and a water! She even told me where I could get more water if I wanted it. She’s off getting more students. Get this. Some people do worse than I did in Ottawa. They bring so much luggage that the instructors need a cart! A cart? Good lord! She said I packed “quite reasonably.” This is good to hear. Hahaha. So anyway, she led me here, and I’ve now eaten a turkey sandwich. I had a scary moment where I thought the turkey was going to disagree with me and I was going to lose my lunch right on this bus. Ouch that’s a loud horn. Hope that doesn’t mean anything bad. But luckily for me, I didn’t hurl. That would have been uber embarrassing. So I’m sitting here, waiting, apparently seven more are coming, I want to meet them. I wanna meet them now now now! I wonder which one of them will be my room-mate. Maybe none of them will be, and it’ll be one of the other four that I guess are driving? I don’t know. Heehee I’m in the GDB bus! So far I’ve met Jen. She seems nice, we had a good giggle all the way to the bus so that’s cool. Come on it’s almost noon, I wanna meet more folks. She was impressed that I wrote down her cell phone number and had it on me to call her. Well duh, that’s what they gave it to us for. But maybe I’m just anal about making sure I get where I’m going, hahahaha. Damn my head it still hurts. I felt sorry for the flight attendants. They were getting yelled at by some woman who thinks she’s so important because she’s in first class and knows french,and she thinks the french lady said the wrong flight numbers or something. She wouldn’t leave them alone! I managed to learn that the dude sitting in the aisle seat lives in Toronto, goes to Greenwood College, and was visiting his aunt at Burkley. Man it’s warm in the sun. Heehee it’s nice here. Guess I’ll stop for now and eat my fig newton now that my stomach settled down. Ug that was scary. Ok it’s now 12:10. I really hope someone shows up soon. Is everyone lost but me? 7 lost people? Holy lord! I know it only seems like an eternity because the plane landed at 11 and I guess it took a while to get my bags and get out here. But eek eek I hope someone gets here soon cause this is mildly spooky. Ok this beast decided to get all weird. Ok it seems fine now. Icky I’m sweating. It’s 12:15. Ok I took my coat off. Jebus I’m hot. Met one person, Jill. has four kids and a grandbaby. not my room-mate. Two more people just joined us. Sylvia and David, seem to be together. *What was I smoking? They were just on the same flight. David is a highschool senior, I don’t know what to make of him. He’s very quiet, but when he speaks, he’s a total asshole. I didn’t think much of one of the guys from my Ottawa class either though and he changed, so maybe this’ll be the same. Sylvia is very much older than young David! Oh god I was stupid to think they were together. I guess Sylvia lived in Oakville at one point. Met my room-mate, Autumn. This could be interesting. She’s happy to have a Canadian Room-mate so she can come to Canada sometime. Ok then. She’s a ball of energy. Carmen is a quiet lady. David won’t get off his phone. Very odd. Bernard sounds like my friend Anton. He scares me a little. He had a giant suitcase. He’s weird. Later on, he fell asleep while they were reading the code of conduct/contract. And I don’t mean drift off, I mean snore snore snore! Um ok. He doesn’t speak much, and when he does, he mumbles and talks very very slowly. Then there’s Amy. I think I’ll like Amy. She’s from South Carolina. She not so proudly says her town was the birthplace of the KKK. She made fun of Autumn for treating me like some kind of alien entity, being Canadian. Then she said, “Well, now you can go back and say you’ve officially met a redneck hillbillie.

Have I got everyone? Autumn and I, Jill and Amy, David and Bernard and Sylvia and Carmen. Yup. So we all took off, and went for a bus ride that seemed to take for frickin ever! Then we finally arrived, and one by one, they led us to our rooms. My room was right after this funky loading lounge thingy, so that confused the hell out of me. My room’s pretty cool. They even brailled out instructions for the phone! How cool is this? Oh there I go again. But you can dial a number and get your class schedule for the next day, the menu, and all that stuff. Pretty sweet.

Then the alarm clock, ug the alarm clock. Now that I’ve mastered the beast, it’s all cool, but it was a stubborn sucker. It also helps when you find the switches on the sides. Uh-huh, that was not so brilliant.

They took us for a tour. If I could just tie things together from one side of the hall to the other, I think I’d get it. But I can find the day room, dining room, my room, which his key, and the computer room. I know where the nurse’s room is if I need it, because it’s right by this buzzing laundry room. I’m happy. The dryers are stacked, but the buttons are in the middle! I won’t need a stool like in Ottawa!

It felt like I could never unpack. I’d just get started and the phone would ring, or I’d have to go somewhere. We had to go and meet at 5 and they had to read out the boring stuff, and, er, Bernard had a nap. We met the rest of the class then. There’s this slow but sweet lady named Meredeth I think that’s how you spell it, a loud rehab counsellor dude named Frank, and a guy named Al who seems very quiet and stuff.

Then we went for dinner! Mmm prime rib! And espresso ice cream. and then I wonder why I’m still awake. But I’m gonna keal soon. I’m finally unpacked and stuff. I’ve felt very anti-social today, but there’s so much to process! But this place rocks! I think that’s everything for today. If I think of anything else important, I’ll throw it in another entry.