500 Words a Day

July 17

I have decided to start looking for another service dog. I need a cross trained mobility assist dog/seeing eye dog.
I have had two service dogs in the past Tess, a Cheasapeake Bay Retriver and Juniper, a Doberman.
I trained both of these dogs myself and I am hoping to train the next one also.

Tess was a large female Chessie, she was about two years old when I got her, she was a retired show dog and came to me already obedience trained. I taught her to bring me things that I needed such as the phone, the cell, meds, water bottles from the fridge and other things.
When we were out and about she wore a specially made harness that had a three in rigid handle above her shoulders.
I grasped this handle when we were walking and Tess would pull gently as she walked forward. This slight forward pull helped me to keep walking in a somewhat straight line. . When she felt me start to lean or loose balance one way or the other she pulled or pushed against my legs to keep me from falling.
She also was trained to alert me to obstacles in my path, curbs and steps.
Tessa was dog aggressive, mostly she just wanted to make sure that every dog around knew that she was the queen . LOL If she was working she was fine but dog parks were out of the question.

Tess was a dream dog to work with . She was always on the job, watching out for me, making sure I wasn’t going to fall . After I had her for a few years she developed Epilepsy and one day she went into a Grand Mal seizure and she never recovered from it. I had her put to sleep that evening.

After a few months of grieving time I found Juniper, the Doberman. He was a big goofy dog who just didn’t have what it takes to be a service dog. He would do all the basic obedience commands but his mind was usually somewhere else. He had a very short attention span and he wouldn’t or couldn’t focus on my and what I needed.
If he felt me start to fall he would get out of the way so I didn’t fall on him. Good survival technique but it didn’t help me much. After about six months he went back to the breeders and once again I was dogless.

That was almost a year ago and I am still dogless. I have just started checking out web sites and writing letters to breeders to see if I can get another dog.

I have considered going to a training school to get a dog. I have talked to several schools and there aare two
or three that I am seriously considering. One is the Guide Dog Foundation in NY and the other is South Eastern in Florida.