Since I was going to be outside my normal work environment, taking the metro everyday (which for me would be stressful), I decided it would be a good idea for me to take him with me. I packed up all my stuff and his as well, and off we went.

The first day, it was a bit rough on the metro to balance his bag and my briefcase on the escalator and then in the metro car, but since he is so small, I thought it was smarter to carry him in the bag, than to attempt to make him navigate on the escalator with the rush hour crowds, and the large number of people on the metro itself. In addition, I didn’t know exactly where I was going, so I needed to use my GPS to figure out where the building was. The increased stress messed with my blood sugar, of course, but I passed a small café, and was able to get some decaf coffee and an apple. We got to the training facility with 15 minutes to spare, and I was able to test my sugar, and we were good.

I put his bag under the desk, and class started. We were given frequent breaks, so I took advantage of those to take him down to the park that was just across the street. He was able to stretch his legs and let nature take its course during the breaks.

My boss was sitting right next to me, and didn’t even know I had Hoagie with me until we went to dinner at the Melting Pot.
“Was he with you all day?” he asked.
“Uhm, yes. Of course he was. I didn’t have time to go and get him after class and then get here to the restaurant.”
“But, I didn’t even hear him at all.”
“Well, he *is* trained. That is the point of a service dog. They are trained to serve, and in order to do their job, they have to learn to be quiet so that they can pay attention to their handler – that would be me.”
“Well, doesn’t he want to be petted and played with?”
“Yes, but he is working during the day. But, I do reach down and pet him during the day, and that also gives him a chance to sniff and taste my skin which is partly how I think he can tell what is going on with me.”
“I can’t believe he was that quiet.”
“But you know he was there, and you know he *was* that quiet.”
“Well, when do you feed him?”
“He gets fed twice a day. In the morning and in the evening, which means that he was fed before we left the hotel, and he will be fed after I go home from the restaurant.”
“Doesn’t he want some food while you are eating?”
“I don’t feed him at restaurants. I don’t want to encourage him to beg, and it is not appropriate for me to feed him in the restaurant. The restaurant is for people, not dogs. And he is still at work.”
“You are a slave driver.”
“No, I am a person who has special needs, and he is allowing me to have those needs taken care of regardless of where I am without needing a nurse to travel with me. He is much cheaper than having a dedicated nurse.”
Another co-worker asked, “Why don’t you bring him to work?”
“I could bring him to work without him disturbing anyone. My concern is that people at work would find out, and they would disturb him.” I replied.

That is really my biggest concern. After taking him this entire week to that training, I see that he is ready to go with me to work every day if I really needed to have him there. My bigger concern is that I work with some co-workers who may not be able to control themselves and may keep coming over to visit with him. That would disturb what he is there to do. He is supposed to keep an eye on my condition, retrieve my medications, and pick things up that I drop when it is difficult for me to get them.

Currently, we are in DC at a training event for me for my day-to-day job.  My husband and I had a long talk about whether or not to bring Hoagie with me (as it would mean taking him on the Metro (subway) and having sit with me in class all day long with people I and he don’t know.

Right now, Hoagie does not go with me to work on a daily basis.  I do tend to take him if I am working on the weekend (and the office will be mostly empty.)  I feel it is important to have him when there are not many (if any) people who could step in and assist me if something should happen to me medically, but for the training, the class has 19 or 20 students and an instructor, so there is little chance that if something happened no one would think to call 911.

As far as training goes, Hoagie has passed the Canine Good Citizen award from the AKC.  He also took several classes in Show preparation (before I had him neutered) because I thought perhaps his breeder and I would decide to show him.  She agreed that he was as good if not better than his brother, but I decided that I didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with what would be involved in entering the Show Circuit, and I didn’t want to hire a professional handler who would take him from me for travel to and from the shows.  As a service dog, he can’t serve me if he is away from me.  Showing him was at cross purposes with what I wanted to do with him, so I had him neutered and stop taking him to Show Classes.

I continued with Obedience lessons until the middle of August, progressing from Beginners, to Sub-Novice, to Novice and into a pre-Field/Companion Dog/Rally type class where we worked on various skills including retrieval of dumbbells, jumps over hurdles, off-lead healing and other off-lead skills, and such.  Hoagie did well, but there were several times that he would break long stays or long owns, or break from heeling to alert me that something was wrong with me (my blood sugar was dropping, or something else like that) and would go to my purse to retrieve medicine).  He also nearly missed canine good citizen for the same reason.  He was antsy when I left the room because he can’t keep an eye on my needs if we are separated.

I have started working on dropping objects other than just pill bottles and having him retrieve them by name.  Bottle lids (for bottles of drinks like my flavored water), pens,and  other small items that I may drop during the course of the day and need him to get for me.  I have gotten to the point where I can drop multiple items and ask for a specific one, and about 80% of the time, he can figure out which one I want when I say its name.  He isn’t perfect, but he is getting there.  He can tell the different between medicine (which is either my daily medicine container, my weekly medicine container, or a bottle of medicine – all of those are “medicine” in his mind right now); a “pen”, which is anything roughly pen shaped right now; a lid, which is a bottle lid, like from Fuze, vitamin water, or bottled water.

I am working on getting him to retrieve his comb and brush, but he is hesitant because he doesn’t always like grooming, and he knows that if I have the comb or brush, he will get groomed.  He can retrieve his ball, of course, as well.  Once he gets the current items a little more consistently, I am going to work on collar and leash.  He is usually wearing his collar, but there are times I take it off (like before a bath).   I would to work on the remote for the TV, but I may have to have that in some type of case in order for him to carry it.  Same for my cell phone.  I don’t think his mouth is big enough to carry it unless it was in a case with a handle.  My purse is way too large for a <5 pound dog to carry.

As well as he has done this week, I think I could easily bring him to work everyday, since I wouldn’t have to deal with the metro everyday.  He has been fine using the metro (well, he is in a carrier), but on an average day, he would be in my personal vehicle, and only stuck in his bag during the actual work day.  There is little grass for him to use at work, but enough (I think) that we could make it work.

On a bad note, I haven’t been back to regular obedience class since August.  I quit because we had a 2 week vacation, and I didn’t want to pay for classes I wouldn’t attend, then when I got back, things at work needed my attention, and I have been working 60-72 hour weeks.  That doesn’t really leave me a lot of time for obedience lessons.  However, as soon as the content is migrated to SharePoint 2010, I will have shorter weeks.  If you are interested in SharePoint, and want to read my SharePoint log, Follow this SharePoint link.

He is starting to come if I give it to him when he is a bit away from me and then I call him. I haven’t had luck though in getting him to pick it up if it is on the bed a bit away from me, and then have him bring it to me. Again, we are only a week into this phase.

The key to all of these trainings it to work on them consistently until he understands what I want, by shaping the action. As he does something that is close, I praise and encourage it. This encourages him to move closer to the correct action.

Dogs that are trained by training groups often take 18 months to train their dogs.  I expect it will take as long to train my dog.  Just because I am training my dog to do a different set of tasks doesn’t mean that it will be faster.  Hardly.  In fact, since I am not a professional trainer, it may take longer.  Of course, since he is the only one I am working with, it may move more quickly.  And since I work with him at all times of the day (during any activity, I can work in some training, that may speed things up as well.)

He did surprise me yesterday though.  He spontaneously did an action that I had not started to train yet – I had read something that caused me to cry, and he came to me and tried to cheer me up.  I, of course, rewarded him for that action.  I always want to encourage actions that are tasks that he is supposed to do, even if they are not ones I am purposefully training at that moment.  In fact, I wasn’t sure how I was going to train him on this one.  How does one teach empathy?

The point of this training is to get him used to having my pill container in his mouth (the one we use for training is a duplicate of my actual medicine container). Once he gets these three down pat, I will work on him picking it up when I point to it (Get). The step beyond that will be to see if I can get him to “get” the medicine container at medicine time and bring it to me.

This will be helpful if I am in the middle of something, and don’t recognize his attempt to remind me that it is time to take meds. It will also be helpful if we are somewhere other than at home so my routine is unsettled. When we are here, I am nearly always sitting on the bed with the meds on my nightstand, so there would be no reason for him to go and get them, but if I am visiting my mother, I might be in the family room, and he would need to retreive them fromthe guest room and bring them to me to remind me it is time to take them.

In addition, teaching him take, hold, and give will also be the base of all fetching skills he will need.  Fetching tissues, fetching keys, fetching other small items.  I will still need to teach him what those items are, of course, but once he understands the basic idea of getting things and bringing them to me, teaching him what each item is won’t be too difficult.  Of course, being a small dog, he isn’t going to be able to bring me large items. 

However, there is a solution to some of that: handles.  If the item has a handle (even if the handle has been added to it), a dog can be taught to drag the item.  Dogs can drag an item that is heavier than something that they can lift.  This same idea is used when a service dog is taught to open a refrigerator dog by pulling a rope tied to the handle.  I don’t know that I will need to teach my little guy to do that, but it is the same basic idea.

Since then, I took a 6 month temp to perm position at JFCOM. The 6 months was over in October, but they have made me an offer (finally, that is a completely different story as to why that too so long), and I officially start on Monday). I have a new dog; the bathroom, the furnace and the disposal in my house are fixed; and the HVAC at the rental house is fixed as well.

My new pup is about the most different kind of dog that I could have gotten from my last dog. My last dog – a labrador afraid of water. This dog, a toy being trained as a service dog. I thought I would use this blog as a way to document his training successes; thinking it might encourgage other people with disabilities to attempt to train their own service animal rather than try to find a group that trains them and get on a waiting list.

First, get yourself a puppy. But make sure the breed you choose is a good match for the work you will need your new worker to do. I chose a toy breed because I am not in need of a dog that can pull a wheelchair, or do other heavy work. I need a dog that can remind me to take medication and can recognize the signs of oncoming episodes. A small dog can do that just as easily as a small dog, and a small dog fits my lifestyle right now better than a large dog.

Some people probably are wondering what exactly is my disability. Some people already know (or suspect). That isn’t really the focus of this blog. And it isn’t really relevent. I want this to be applicable to a larger audience. In order to make it applicable to more people, I have to keep this not centered on my own narrow needs.

First step is to foster a strong relationship with your new puppy.  Second step is to get into a good basic obedience class.  Your pup needs to understand the basic commands or good manners – sit, down, stand, come.  All dogs need to understand these commands, and be able to do them on the first request.  Find a good trainer, one that understands that you will be taking your dog beyond just basic lessons.  It is best if your trainer is one that trains beyond just basic, but all the way to Utility Dog, even Agility and possibly also does training for Show handling.  This shows that he/she is a well rounded trainer and has had a lot of experience with many different types of dogs.  You also need to feel comfortable with your trainer.  He or she is going to be spending a lot of time helping you with your new companion.

The next post will talk about basic training as well as introducing your dog to basic service dog skills.

I also took on a computer rehabilitation job.  Turns out, there were 14 viruses found in the first 24 hours, and it was still going.  I have no idea when it will be done.  It just keeps finding more.  I think her son is spending way too much time on Facebook, I would say.  That and too many peer to peer sharing sites.  Yeah, you save .99 cents on a song.  Free song, and free ITD (internet transmitted disease. )  It really needs a new CPU and some new RAM, but that is up to the owner, not me.    She did have Microsoft updates checking automatically, but she didn’t have the firewall turned on.  So, I fixed that as well.

On the other hand, I had a phone interview after work yesterday.  They were so impressed, they offered me the job without a face-to-face.  It would be more money; it would be closer to home; and it would be SharePoint administration.  The best part would be that it is not a BRACing base.  It is not a specific project either.  It is support for *all* of their projects, so even if one project loses its funding, my position wouldn’t be gone.  This job is funded by overhead.  He even said that they are willing to send me off for Security + certification and MOSS certification right away.  It is a tempting offer.  Especially since I have been notified that my job is one of the ones being BRACed.  This sounds like a very good match.

When I took my current job, I knew that the base was BRACing.  For those of you who have not heard that term before BRAC stands for Base Realignment and Closure.  Congress had already decided that Ft. Monroe was going to close, and that its services would be performed at Ft. Knox when I accepted my position.  In order to have those services performed at Ft. Knox, personnel would be transferred to Ft. Knox in stages. 

I am a contractor.  I work for a well known contracting company that does quite a bit of its business for the government.  I am not really at liberty to discuss it much more than that, but it isn’t all that hard to figure out which company it is. 

Anyway, as a contractor, I can’t be reassigned to another base.  My “billet” can be moved, but it is completely up to me whether or not I follow that billet.  If the billet moves, then it is a “material” change in my job description if it means that I would have to commute more than 1 hour further than my current billet.  Well, to be honest, there isn’t really any way to get from Hampton Roads Virginia to Kentucky in less than one hour, so this is a material change to my job description if they move my billet to Kentucky.   In this case, there are a few billets that are being kept in this area that will continue to serve the customer remotely, but they are only people with a very special skill set and special indepth knowledge of the software my company designed for the customer.  I wasn’t on that project.  I don’t have that skillset.  I don’t have that “special indepth” knowledge.  Mine is not one of those very few billets.

I have a bachelor’s degree in computer science.  Lots of people have the same degree as I have.  Yes, I have a lot of experience in web design and maintenance.  Yes, I have a lot of experience in firewalls (some of it very specific and special).  Yes, I have some interesting experience in database optimization (I know when to stop at 3rd, and when to go beyond).  Yes, I have some experience in network security; in graphic design and manipulation; in video training demonstration creation;  but I also have experience in herbal healing; in divination; in small  mammal genetic research; in peer-to-peer counseling; in group counseling facilitation; in suicide intervention; in addiction intervention; in language team management; and some other off the wall skills that don’t necessarily sound like they go together, but for me, they really do.

So, no, I will not end up keeping my job.  My team mate won’t either.  He isn’t moving to Kentucky.  He told me so.  That will  leave our team lead on his own, because there apparently are no IT people in Kentucky to take our places or those of any of the others who aren’t moving to Kentucky.

But, that is not the only thing on my mind right now.  My upstairs hall bathroom toilet chose last week to decide to die on me.  Right before my first real vacation in seven years.  So, I put off getting it fixed, figuring I would do it when I got back. The night before I was set to leave, my garbage disposal decided to die as well.  It is now leaking, so I can’t use my sink or my dishwasher.  So, I can’t wash any dishes, not even by hand.  So I had to leave a sink and dishwasher full of dirty dishes.  While I was gone, our rental manager called to tell us that the heat/air unit at our rental house had died and the tenants were demanding that we fix it immediately.  Well, the problem is, we can’t send a check  to the repair company when the checkbook is home on the desk.  The repair company wasn’t willing to give us  any financing (we were going to be back in a WEEK.)  It wasn’t like we needed a mortgage for the stupid thing.  We have the money in the checkbook.  We just didn’t have the CHECKBOOK!  The rental manager couldn’t get it through his head that we were in Florida and our checkbook was in Virginia.   We couldn’t just magically make the check appear in his hand and more than we could make it appear for the heating company.

Anyway, so we get home, call the heating company to arrange to give them the check, and they say they will swing by on Saturday to pick it up. We got home Wednesday night -  for all their insistance that they have it immediately, I don’t know why they didn’t come over on Wednesday.  No, they didn’t want to come until Saturday.  So what the #$%%^ was the big deal then?  

My son had arranged with the dentist to have his wisdom teeth taken out on Friday (so my husband can take him and drive him home when he is loopy  from the anesthesia.  Thursday, I get the wonderful news that I am not important enough to keep my job.  Then on Friday, while my husband is home with my son, he calls to tell me that my dog is having seizures.  My 12 year old labrador.  The dog I have had since my daugher was 1.  The dog I got from an animal rescue society.  The one who is afraid of water and won’t fetch.  The one who is afraid of thunder, firecrackers, and any other loud noises.  The one who lays at my feet when I watch TV, and lets me use him as a foot rest.  The one who rests his warm, soft muzzle on my thigh when I am working on my laptop.  The one that rolls over in the dry grass in the backyard and makes that “I am so contented” sound when I am trying to write my novel.  The one that has learned to climb up into the playhouse so he can lie next to me when I am feeling out of sorts and lonely.  The one who always thinks that he is sneaking into my room and that I don’t notice him and the jangle of his tags as he creeps next to the bed when there is thunder at night, but I always know he is there.  The one who jumps to attention the second he hears the crinkle of the doggie treat bag.

I know he is at the end of the normal lifespan for a lab.  But, right now, I need the unconditional love of my dog.  I am losing my job.  My house is falling apart.  My son is loopy from the meds.  My rental house is costing me an arm and a leg.  My daughter has wrecked my car (oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that, didn’t I?) Well, it was the car I bought for her, that she was going to pay me back for, but let’s face it, she can’t afford to pay me back.  She can’t afford insurance either, so I had her on MY insurance, which is now going to go sky high.  I took her off after the accident, once I realized that the car was totalled.  So now she can’t drive, even if she could find a car she could afford to buy.  Which means she probably isn’t going to college anymore, which means that I paid for a semester that will be all F’s.  So that is wasted money too.

I need the unconditional love of a warm, soft muzzle, that comes and presses into my lap, not saying anything, but telling me that I am the center of his world.  I don’t need to do anything for him.  I don’t need to give him a check, or insurance, or a car, or a new heater.  I only need to let him leave his muzzle on my thigh while I work on my laptop.

I need the pressure of a strong dog body, that lies down in front of me, on the floor, while I am watching TV and folding laundry, that says in those silent, unheard, but so loud words, “Mom, just put your feet on me, and I will hold them up for you.”

I need the unconditional love of my dog.  The dog that is lying on my floor, having seizures while I watch, helpless, waiting for the vet to open.  Waiting for each episode to end, so that I can clean up the spittle, and remind him that I am here for him, willing to do the little bit that I can for him.  To hold his soft muzzle, and lift it from the puddle of drool and wipe it dry. 

Life is so unfair.

Gerbils have an average lifetime of 2.5-3 years.  Females are fertile until they are about 18 months old, though occasionally, one will still have small litters sporatically up through about 2 years old.  I had never bred Annie or Mira.  They were from Vincent and Lauren, but as golden agoutis, they would most likely give me golden agouti pups, and that is the “regular” wild color.  Most people who are adopting gerbils want something “exotic” or “special” looking.    Annie had another problem besides just being the standard color.  She also had seizures as a pup.  That is another reason that she was never adopted – I never showed her to any possible adoptive parents.  I didn’t want someone who wouldn’t know what to do to have her.  I wanted her to stay with me.  I have a firm stance that I will not breed any pups that I am not willing to keep and love for their entire lives, so they had a forever home with me.  I did enter Mira in a few Virtual Shows, and she even won some points, though I had not taken her to an in-person gerbil show, but  I had never entered Annie.

Anyway, I am rambling, the point of this post is not really to talk about Annie, or Lisa, or any other particular gerbil, but to talk about life and its shortness.  The average gerbil lifetime is 2.5-3 years, but some last so much longer, and some have so much less.  And the same is true with people.  Several weeks ago, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It wasn’t completely unexpected, in that every female on my husband’s side of the family other than his mother, sister and our 9 year old had already been diagnosed with breast cancer.  Some had died from it, some lived through it, but they all had it.  So when she was diagnosed, it was more more acceptance of something that we always knew would happen.  I know that someday my sister-in-law will call with the news that she has been diagnosed, and we will cry, and then we will make a plan.  And I hope that before I get that call from my daughter, breast cancer will have been cured.

The same day that we got the call from my mother-in-law (who will be 70 this fall), we got word from one of our friends down the street that her 13-year old daughter had been diagnosed with bone cancer that day.  It did not run in the family.  There had been no reason to suspect cancer.  She just had pain in her shoulder, and when they did the exam and the testing, it came back as cancer.  She started chemo two weeks ago.  She will have 3 months of chemo, then will have the bone replaced with an artificial bone, three weeks to recover, then 3 more months of chemo.  My husband has shaved his head in an act of solidarity with her.  My mother-in-law is old enough to hold her own if she ends up losing her hair, but a 13-year old…to lose her hair will be the end of life as she knows it. 

Perspective is so different between a 70-year old and a 13-year old.  She will have to give up dance and pom-poms this year.  I doubt my mother-in-law will give up anything.  She had given up most of everything years ago as other things stole her health.  The 13-year old will end up having a home-bound teacher sent from the school, so that she can keep up with her school work, and maybe not be held back.  My mother-in-law will just watch her “shows” and fold laundry a little slower.

We expect the old and the sick to get older and sicker and to eventually die.  My grandmother died this year.  She was 100.  When people ask me, “What did she die of?”  I say, “She was 100″.  She didn’t die of anything other than being ready to move on.  Her body was used up and she was tired of its limitations.  She didn’t hasten its demise; there was no suicide involved or anything.  But, she had sort of gotten tired of living.  It was a peaceful transition for her, and it was not frightening at all to me, or my 9 year old. 

But, we don’t expect the young or the healthy to die.  Somehow, we have in our minds that they are somehow…exempt.  There is nothing farther from the truth.  I remember when I was pregnant with my now 9 year old.  I was sent to the “high risk” doctor, and I asked him flat out, “What are my chances of dying in this pregnancy?”  And his response was that even as a high risk, I was still more likely to be killed in my car on the way to the corner grocery store by a lunatic driver than I was to anything pregnancy related.  That is a scary thought.  I am no longer pregnant (obviously, if she is 9), but I still shop at that corner grocery store, and those lunatics are still on the road.

Annie, my beautiful golden agouti, is gone.  But, I have three breeder couples who will be giving me new pups in the next month or so.  Some of those pups will be adopted by bright eyed children whose parents will end up doing most of the care of those gerbils.  A few of those pups will stay here as possible future breeding stock, and some will just stay here as their forever homes.  Eventually, I won’t think about Annie every day.  Maybe, someday, I will have to look up in the database to see what day she actually died on, and I will be shocked that I didn’t remember that it was the anniversary of 9-11, when so many who were not old, who were not sick, lost their lives, for no good reason.

I have one of his sons with Honeysuckle, and they had one litter, of which I kept one pup (Annabelle).  I put another son with Peanut, but only got blacks (and black with whites).  Again, not colors that are genetically what I need in order to get closer to more rare colors.  But, I don’t really have a plan, so without a plan, how do I know if I am getting any closer?

What I need to do is decide what I want to eventually put out, then I have to get gerbils with the genetics to get me there.  My hubby wants to blend the Lauren/Vincent line with the Java/Gandalf line, but that doesn’t necessarily give me anything genetically useable. 

Most of the gerbils that came from the Lauren/Vincent line are really too old to breed.  All the females are.  That leaves only males, and even those are really too old, except maybe Bambi or Flower, who are grandchildren.  There are no females young enough on the Java/Gandalf line except whatever comes from Honeysuckle or Peanut (which means Annabelle).

If I put Annabelle and Bambi together, I would get Light Dark Eyed Honey, A*C(cb\ch)D*e(e\ef)G*P*; (BEW) Light CP Dark Eyed Honey, A*cbchD*e(e\ef)G*P*; Himalayan, DTW, A*chch******P*; Himalayan, Very DTW, aachch******P*.  From those, I could get siamese and burmese if I matched with a burmese or siamese. 

I just don’t which way to go right now.