November 15, 2012
Sir Thomas’s brother lives with a twelve-year-old girl and her family. He goes to school with her, both of them navigating the hallways of lockers, onlookers and, unfortunately, jokers. This girl’s story of life with her service dog winds its way around my heart not only because our dogs are related. In some ways, our stories are, too. When blood vessels burst inside my skull, I was twelve-years old. My left side stopped moving and I spent a third of the seventh grade undergoing brain surgery, relearning how to walk and sleeping in the den (my room was on the second floor and managing stairs didn’t happen for a while). Each night, I willed back at least some of my long hair. A shaved head might have been cool to my classmates. The U-shaped scar left over from the surgery, however, looked like a trap door to my gray matter. It was […]
November 8, 2012
Venturing Out Report #3: Shopping How We Did: Sir Thomas likes to shop. Sometimes, he gets ahead of me while we’re out on a walk.. Not so when shopping. Or, as I discovered, not so when there’s a shopping cart involved. Considering how many times I bashed the the plastic basket into his shoulder (by mistake!) or ran over a front paw with a wheel (by mistake, again!), he sticks by the side of the cart . We’ve been to the grocery store numerous times, the fabric shop and, among other places, the pharmacy (no surprise given the cocktail of meds one takes with PD). What I Learned: “Leave It” is a command we need to work on. He’s good, but I want better than that when we’re passing displays of coffee cake that happen to be exactly the same height as his head. And then there are the shelves stacked […]
October 27, 2012
Sir Thomas made the news (and is so handsomely photogenic!) Click on the link: Knight in a nylon vest
October 23, 2012
Sir Thomas and Elsie are getting along better than I could’ve imagined. They read each other not only instinctively but with particular care. Play time happens only when they both want to race around the yard. One tests the other or, somehow, even before posing in the forelegged puppy bow, they communicate. Elsie seems to appreciate that he bounds over her and doesn’t barrel into her. Post-playtime, when she wants to lie in her bed (the one with her name on it, of course), she’ll appreciate it when he really learns to read.