I'VE FINALLY MOVED...

After months of uncertainty and stress about finding, securing and moving into a new apartment, it's finally happened. I have a lot to write about. Caring for and maintaining the behavior of a Guide Dog during such a stressful period of time hasn't been easy. But more about all that soon...

THE 704 TO THE SEA...

Yesterday, Dobby and I took a trip to Santa Monica to spend the afternoon relaxing at the pier. It was 85 degrees and sunny, what else is there to do on a Saturday like that? I wish I could say the trek was as relaxing as I had hoped. The bus ride on the 704 line took nearly an hour from where I live in West Hollywood to Santa Monica because of the traffic. In a former life when I could still see to drive, the trip wouldn't take more than about 20 to 30 minutes but riding the bus with traffic and periodic stops extends the trip to an hour. With the heavy traffic we encountered, apparently I wasn't the only person who thought it would be a good day to go to the ocean.


Once we arrived, Ocean Front Park was crammed full of people. Dobby did his usual best at weaving us back and forth to get through the crowd. The real challenge for him came when we finally got to the pier itself. The place was a madhouse. I actually considered turning us around and finding a nice quiet place on the grass where we could sit and relax but Dobby loves sitting at the end of the pier watching the world go by. There are always seagulls, pelicans, people, boats, dolphins and a myriad of other distractions constantly going by which keep his attention. If I use my monocular, I can occasionally get lucky and catch a glimpse of what Dobby is looking at. Out of sheer dumb luck, I managed to catch a glimps of a harbor seal swimming in the water near the pier. Dobby was too busy watching a dog that a couple had brought with them for a walk to notice.


The trip home was just as long. I don't go to the pier all that often because the long bus ride is hard on Dobbs. He's good at sitting patiently for about 20 minutes and then he becomes restless. I often end up letting him lay down on the floor during such long rides. It's more comfortable for him that way. We've come up with a routine that works. When the bus stops and the front door opens I give him a sit command and he dutifully jumps up into a sitting position between my legs and out of the path. It's an imperfect solution and has risks but it simply isn't fair to make Dobbs sit still perfectly still for nearly an hour. Who among us could do that?

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT...

At least once a month, I try to go to the Beverly Center with Dobby so together we can practice working on escalators. Now the Beverly Center is a big mall with five levels of parking above ground and three floors of mall space on top of that. The mall was designed to be entered by escalators that climb up the side of the building to the sixth floor. There are elevators which take you into the mall and to get to them you have to work through the Macy's Men's Store on the ground level. Most of the time, I take the elevators to get into the mall where I can more easily prepare Dobbs for escalator practice.

Now for a dog, riding escalators can be a very dangerous thing; less so for a trained guide dog but it's still dangerous. A dog's paws can get caught in the collapsing steps, in between the steps and the grill which clears the grooves on top of the steps as they collapse and recycle to the opposite end of the device. In fact, just about two months ago, at the Beverly Center, there was a serious accident when a woman forced her small dog to ride on an escalator and it's paw got caught and mangled. Security tried to keep her from getting onto the device with her dog (who was resisting getting onto the escalator) however the woman ignored the warnings and forced her dog on anyway only to have the situation end in disaster. Dogs aren't generally allowed in the mall although in Los Angeles, little dogs have become a fashion accessory and people tend to carry them around in their handbags where ever they go. You'd be amazed at some of the places that Dobbs and I have had dog encounters but I'll leave that for another post. The point of me telling you all this is that, in spite of Dobbs' training, escalators can be very dangerous for him and there is a risk every time we ride them.

In order to keep Dobby as safe as possible, he has to wear shoes when he rides on escalators. Dobby has a set of four Vibram soled booties that protect his feet. He also wears them when the sidewalks are too hot during the summer and could burn his pads. Now, Dobby doesn't like his shoes all that much. He tolerates wearing them but prefers to not have them on. I guess it must feel kind of like walking on the moon for him while he's wearing them. Normally, he can feel the ground with the pads on his feet and when he's wearing his shoes, the ground must feel like it's disappeared. For the first five minutes after putting his shoes on, Dobby high steps around and tries to sit down off his feet. I take out my cane and heel him around the first level of the mall until he gets used to having them on his feet and then we head for the escalators.

The Beverly Center has at least 20 sets of escalators, probably more, I've never tried counting them but suffice to say there are plenty of opportunities to practice riding on them. Once Dobbs gets over sulking about having to wear his shoes, he actually kind of likes riding on the escalators with me. For him it's all a big fun game and another chance to earn praise and an occasional food reward for a job well done. Not to mention that Dobby enjoys doing things with me and riding on escalators is one of the many adventures he enjoys sharing with me and I with him.

Right after I first graduated from guide dog school, I avoided riding escalators with Dobby for about 6 months. Having to stop, put on his shoes, get him comfortable in them, etc. just to ride between two floors didn't seem to make a great deal of sense to me when there was a perfectly good elevator available. But as with anything we don't do regularly, our skills can become dulled if they're not practiced occasionally. As time wore on, this began to weigh on me and I realized that if I was forced to ride an escalator with Dobby some day because there was no alternative, I would be remiss if I didn't occasionally practice riding them with him to keep his training sharp. What I discovered was that I was the one who needed the practice. Dobbs knew exactly what to do. He's an incredibly bright dog and its situations like this that make me realize just how smart he really is.

I won't bore you with a step-by-step description of how we work on escalators but the key thing is to have Dobby moving when we get on and when we exit. One of the biggest worries is that in a crowed situation, people coming off of the escalator behind us can rapidly build up if we don't get out of the way quickly. It's that part of the process that is most nerve racking for me and it's good to practice the techniques in a real world, crowded mall environment. What I've found is that people are very understanding and realize why I'm repeatedly going up and down on the escalators. Actually, a lot of people are really surprised to see me riding with Dobby at my side. It's a fairly unusual sight. People aren't generally allowed to have things like strollers or objects with them so seeing me with my dog on an escalator causes quite a lot of double takes (or so I've been told). The security staff at the Beverly Center loves it when I bring Dobby by to do some practice. They think its good for the general public to see just how much effort it really takes to keep a dog safe on an escalator and they hope that by having me practice riding on them in such a conspicuous way that a greater sense of caution will hopefully rub off onto the general public. Let's hope they're right...

AN AFTERNOON AT THE GETTY...

Dobby and I went to the Getty Center (between the time I had the cold and first pulled my back) and I've been chomping at the bit to tell you about the experience. Confidentially, Dobby and I have been there together several times and the staff at the museum really loves it when I bring him by for a visit. They are always so amazed at how well behaved Dobby is, so confident in fact that the security staff at the museum no longer follows us around to make sure that he isn't accidently walking me into the priceless exhibits; which is a real act of faith because, unlike most other museums, at The Getty, you are allowed to walk right up to the artwork with no ropes or barriers of any kind between you and the masterworks. The Getty Center is, after all, America's equivalent of The Louvre and it's such a remarkable experience to be able to go there with my dog.

It's an unusual feeling working Dobbs through the galleries, pausing to stand and admire paintings by the likes of Rembrant and Rubins (with my monocular). Dobby, sits patiently at my side waiting for me to finish. Occasionally he lets out a groan of boredom so I try not to linger in the galleries for too long of a time. Dobby is so diligent and I'm amazed that he doesn't get fidgety walking ten feet then stopping then walking ten more feet and stopping. He likes the walking around the museum part but the stopping and staring at paintings and sculpture part he could do without.

The Getty has an amazing outdoor sculpture garden and Dobby loves working through and around it. There's a little stream with bridges and a winding path through a grassy field that he particularly enjoys the challenge of negotiating for me. The path was designed with sharp switch backs that wander down the hillside of the garden. He also enjoys sitting on their outdoor veranda soaking up the scene while I sip a soda and take a break.

Confidentially, I think that, in part, he enjoys The Getty so much because of all the attention he gets from people while we're there. I can't begin to tell you the number of times that people (visiting The Getty from all corners of the world) have expressed surprise and pleasure over seeing a guide dog at the museum. I think Dobby fits right in with all the masterpieces on display. He's pretty darn special and I enjoy giving him a chance to really show off what he can do. I'm looking forward to our next visit...

ROTTEN BANANA ROLLOVER…

It was a very hot afternoon in mid September and working Dobbs around the block to his usual relieving spot wasn’t really a good option. Instead, I heeled Dobby using my white cane down to a small piece of grass by the back driveway of my apartment building so that he could relieve himself.

Now, the day before, Dobby had gotten a bath and oh, was he excited. A full day later he was still bouncing off the walls, prancing around as if to say, “Look at me! I’m so pretty, I’m so pretty and clean!” Right after he had gotten his bath at the grooming salon, he was so over excited by the whole experience that I had to stop him several times en-route to try to calm him down enough so that he could re-focus on his work. Needless to say, Dobby can be a real character sometimes.

As Dobby is wandering around the little patch of grass, he relieves number 1 and I’m waiting to see if he’s going to do number 2 when one of my neighbors, Susan, walks up to us and says hello. Dobby likes Susan a whole lot and I put him into a sit and he gave her his paw. I then put Dobbs into the down position and began chatting with Susan about the latest news from around the building. Well, unbeknown to me, someone had previously dropped a whole banana onto the cement right by the edge of the grass and it had been baking in the hot sun for quite some time. Now, I pay close attention to what Dobbs is doing at all times. I’ve caught him occasionally trying to “sample” things in the grass while he’s sniffing around looking for a good spot to do his business so he knows that I’m watching him. He rarely if ever tries to eat anything on the ground any more but I still keep my eye on him. That doesn’t mean, however, that interesting items on the ground don’t attract his attention from time to time and on this day, that banana, apparently, was fascinating to him. Now Dobbs knew better than to try to eat it but without warning he decided that rotten banana would be a perfect thing to roll around in. Thank goodness he didn't have his harness on when he did it, what a mess that would have been.

Suddenly, I was aware that Dobbs was rolling on his back. I leaned over to scratch his belly thinking that he was still just excited from his bath and because of the fact that Susan was there. Susan said, “Oh my gosh, you do realize that Dobbs is rolling around in an old banana on the ground.” I said, “What! He's rolling around in a banana?” “Yep,” she said, “an old rotten one and it’s all over him.” I ran my hand down Dobbs’ back only to find it covered in warm, rotten, smashed banana. Dobbs was SO proud of himself. I couldn’t believe it. “Dobbs,” I said, “you just got a bath yesterday!” He was wagging his tail so hard it was hitting the side of my leg with a loud “thwap!” “What am I going to do with you,” I said. Susan thought it was kind of funny. I wasn’t that amused. I broke off our conversation and heeled Dobbs back up to my apartment where I tried to clean him off as best I could. It soon became apparent that I was going to have to take him back to the grooming salon to get him re-washed. Of course Dobby was pleased as punch with himself and pranced as he walked down the sidewalk all the way back to the salon. They were nice enough to re-wash him at no charge for which I was very grateful. They’ve earned my business from now on.

Looking back on the whole incident, now I think it's hysterical though, as I've said, at the time, I wasn't amused. I guess the moral of this story is that no matter how well behaved your guide dog may be, he’ll surprise you. Dobbs is crafty when it comes to things like this. He finds ways of following your commands, but does them in ways that while technically follow the letter of the law you’ve laid down; still allow him to do what he wants when you least expect it…

A SERIOUSLY CLOSE CALL…

It happened in a flash, without warning and came within a whisper of leaving Dobbs and I seriously injured and it wasn’t a traffic check.

Monday was a very hectic day and Dobbs was a real trooper. Somehow, I had appointments piled one upon another, back to back and without any breaks all day long. He must have walked nearly five miles before this incident happened and he had handled the entire day with his usual calm collected demeanor, never complaining, never loosing his focus or diligence. He was just enjoying spending the day on the road with me and I have to admit that I was really happy to have him along with me to keep me company in the midst of my hectic schedule.

It was the late afternoon around 5 o’clock and we were coming back from Hollywood where I had just had to return to my pharmacy to have them correct a mistake they had made earlier in the day when filling one of my prescriptions. It was hot, the bus was crowded and people were in an unusually crabby mood. An elderly lady had made everybody grumble because she had insisted that the bus driver extend the wheelchair ramp so that she could get onto the bus with her walker only to ride one block and then hold the whole bus up for 10 minutes while she got off again. She had made Dobbs and I get out of our seat at the front of the bus so she could get by us with her walker and she was rude about it. So needless to say the bus ride wasn’t going all that well to begin with but what happened next is unprecedented and I still can’t believe it happened.

As the elderly lady egresses the bus, a young man who had apparently been out getting drunk in the afternoon at a pub, got onto the bus. According to the bus driver he was so drunk that he couldn’t even get his dollar bill to go into the bus fare-collecting machine. She had waived him to just go and sit down because we would have been there all day waiting for him to pay his fare and the bus was already behind schedule due to traffic. The guy passed by Dobbs and I who was seated normally minding our own business. He nearly tripped and fell over my feet that I was using to protect Dobbs and keep people from stepping on him. He said “sorry,” and blundered on down the aisle deeper into the bus to find a seat. I could smell the alcohol on his breath he was so drunk. I was going to be glad when this bus ride was over.

The bus started up again and traveled for a minute or so when suddenly the driver had to slam the brakes to avoid smashing up a car that had cut the bus off in traffic. Everyone on the bus was thrown forward. Those of us who were seated weren’t too seriously jostled around and I had a good firm grip on Dobbs so he didn’t go flying off anywhere. However, the drunk guy who had just gotten onto the bus had apparently chosen to try to stand up rather than take a seat and he was thrown, through the air, from somewhere in the mid section of the bus all the way to the front of the bus slamming into the fare collection machine head first. As he flew past Dobbs and I, he brushed both of us with his body. Dobbs pressed himself up against me and I pushed myself back into the seat to try to avoid being injured but the truth is that by the time we had reacted to the situation it was already too late to avoid it. Had the man’s flight path been just a few inches more towards us he would have taken both of us out; potentially seriously injuring both Dobbs and myself.

Several people got up out of their seats and went to the man’s aid. He didn’t say anything. Frankly I’m amazed he wasn’t killed. The bus driver pulled over and rather than the man waiting around for help to arrive to check him out, he just fled the bus over the objections of the passengers and the driver.

Honestly, I consider myself lucky not to be in the hospital right now and not to have Dobbs lain up in the animal hospital with serious injuries or broken bones. This episode hasn’t put me off riding the bus. I really don’t have any other way to easily get around LA with my guide dog (given that Access Services can’t seem to figure out that I need a VAN and not a tiny car for transportation. But that’s another story) and so the bus is my only real option regardless of how I feel about it. I guess I should chalk the whole experience up to the idea that, hey, living in LA may be many things, but it’s never boring...

HAPPY, HAPPY, JOY, JOY...

One of the most common questions I'm asked about Dobbs is, "Does he ever get any time off from work?" "When he's at home, does he get to just be a dog sometimes?" "When the harness is off," I say, "he's just a dog and he loves to play like one." Dobbs' favorite playtime game is tug. Whether it's keep-away tug with his Kong or just good old fashioned pull-tug with his Tug Ring, Dobby is a relentless and crafty dog. I love playing with him because it brings him so much happiness. Being a Guide Dog is hard work and Dobbs deserves all the time off he can get.

The other game Dobbs loves to play is fetch. Now fetch, as a rule, is usually discouraged for a guide dog because it can cause obsessive behavior to develop in a dog. One day you'll be working down a street and a bird will fly by and bang! off the two of you go in hot pursuit. Fetching isn't a normal behavior for dogs, as hard as that may be to believe, but is rather a learned behavior. I didn't teach Dobbs to fetch, somebody earlier in his life (prior to living with me) taught him to retrieve but he's got such a diligent work ethic that his playtime fetching hasn't ever shown any sign of spilling over into his working life.

The one problem that I have with fetch is in throwing out his chosen toy to retrieve. He likes to fetch his Nylabone and tossing that across the apartment can be a bit of an act of faith; faith that I won't hit or break anything with it. Dobby can go on fetching for a good half an hour before he tires out. Sometimes his dad (me) tires out more quickly than that but I keep going because I know how much he loves it. When you're in guide dog school they tell you that you need to try to schedule at least fifteen minutes per day to play with your dog. If Dobby got anything less than an hour and a half to two hours of play per day I think he'd go into withdrawal. As I've said, I don't mind and he willingly stops playing when I tell him "that's enough" so it's never become an obsession with him.

One regret that I have is that I haven't been able to secure an outdoor enclosed paddock where I can take Dobbs from time to time to let him run around and really chase after his Kong. Since it isn't safe for me to take Dobby to a dog park, due to the risk of a dog attack or his inadvertently contracting an illness from another dog, this is the one aspect of my guide dog transitional plan which I haven't been able to fulfill since returning home from guide dog school earlier this year. But I'm still looking!

THE CURSE OF A HUNGRY LABRADOR…

As I've said many times before, Dobbs is a great guide dog. He’s smart, focused and really performs his job well. He rarely misses a curb or jumps the last step on a flight of stairs. He threads me through some of the most challenging situations without a hitch and almost never misses a beat, almost. Occasionally he has his moments where his halo slips a bit, when he’s hungry. When my Dobby is hungry, sometimes he can be a real handful. When he’s hungry, all he’s thinking about is getting home so he can get fed. He’s in such a hurry he practically drags me down the sidewalks. He occasionally doesn’t listen to my commands and his only interest is to expedite our excursion so he can get home.

Take today for example. I needed to go to the store this afternoon to pick up a few odds and ends. Now Dobbs’ normal feeding time is at 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Around 2:30 p.m. we headed out to Gelson’s Market, which is about a mile down Santa Monica Boulevard from my place. I used to have a grocery store that was closer but it recently closed for renovation and so Gelson’s is now really the only option that I have for grocery shopping within a reasonable walking distance. In a way it’s great because I get to work Dobbs on a longer and more challenging route and he really loves to get out of the house and work. Dobbs often prances down the street as if to say to the world, “Look at me! See how special I am. See what I get to do!” He can be a character sometimes. But I digress.

From the moment we headed out, Dobbs was in a hurry. He wanted to get to wherever we were going and that was that. At first I wasn’t sure what was up with him. It was a bit windy so I chalked it up to that and put it out of my mind. Our route began normally enough. We had the usual number of dog distractions along the boulevard, which he handled with his usual calm, collected demeanor. He stopped me for a few cars pulling across the sidewalk in front of us and we pulled over at his usual favorite piece of grass to relieve en-route. Everything seemed normal and that’s when the trouble began. We approached a somewhat unusual corner on Holloway and Santa Monica Blvd. Now I wanted to do what is called a “curb to curb” turn in order to reorient myself to cross Santa Monica Blvd. rather than proceeding forward across Holloway and down the same side of the street. After stopping me normally at the curb, I gave Dobbs a right command to execute the turn and rather than listening to what I had said and paying attention to my foot work, Dobby tried to go forward to take me across the street instead of doing the curb to curb I had requested. I immediately called out a “halt” command, commanded him to “heel” and put him in a sit and a down to get him re-focused. It didn’t work.

By this point it was nearly 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon and I began to realize that Dobbs must have been getting hungry early. I got him up from the down position, got him into the ready position and gave him another “right” command. Instead of going right he again tried to take me across the street. He was bound and determined to cross that street. This time I had to give him a collar correction and a “No!” You have to understand, Dobbs rarely if ever needs to be given a collar correction since he’s normally such a well behaved dog that it’s always a bit of a shock to him when it happens. I again put him into a sit and a down hoping that the second time would be the charm and he would calm down and re-focus on the task at hand. Again, I got him up after waiting for a minute or so, got him into the ready position and gave him another “right” command. This time he did execute the turn but he leaped forward dragging me along with him nearly pulling me off balance (And yes, I was in the correct ready position. That's what kept me from falling).

What I’ve noticed with Dobby is that when these episodes happen, the situation tends to snowball and the errors begin to mount one upon the other in succession because he's confused and is trying so hard to do what he thinks I want that he ends up making more mistakes. Dobby just wants to please me so much that he gets frustrated and when he does the wrong thing he overcompensates and tries to take the initiative to prove that he’s capable of handling my requests and that he's a good boy. Dobbs is a sensitive dog and sometimes can be a bit needy and these kinds of episodes are the darker side of that yin and yan of his personality. He so much wants to know that I still love him that he becomes fearful that he's lost that love and gets overwrought. The only way to overcome this vicious cycle is to stop him, put him into a sit and shower him with all the love he can handle and then move on as if nothing has happened. Did I mention that through all of this I had a bag of dog poop in my hand the entire time? That’s originally why I wanted to cross the street instead of heading forward in the direction we were originally traveling because I knew there was a trash-can on the opposite corner where I could drop off my little white plastic bag of joy.

Dobbs and I finally crossed Santa Monica Blvd. successfully, he found the trash can for me with his usual diligence and then, when all seemed like it was relatively back to normal, Dobby showed he had other ideas. He wanted to head back to home and tried to take me back across the street rather than proceeding on to Gelson’s when I gave him a forward command. His "independent streak" went on all the rest of the way to the market. Once there, he behaved himself while we were inside but he started up again once we were back on the road towards home.

I ended up doing two obedience routines with him en-route to try to help him get his focus. It didn’t work. I did some traveling "sits" and "downs" (where you stop every 10 feet or so and put the dog into a sit and a down for a few moments and then repeat it again 10 feet later) with him to try to get him to focus on listening to me. That sort of worked but the closer we got to home, the more he was bouncing off the walls (so to speak). He blew through a curb (which he almost never does) and rather than re-work the entire intersection with him I figured the best possible thing I could do was keep heading for home so he could get fed. If I had tried to re-work the error by re-working the entire intersection it would have been a huge struggle to get him to focus and it wouldn’t have helped him to not make the mistake again in the future because his mind was elsewhere. Sometimes, you've got to know when to cut your losses and at this point, my Dobby had a one tract mind, he simply couldn’t think about anything else but getting home for dinner. I’ve come to realize that one of the strongest forces in Dobbs’ life is his stomach. He doesn’t behave this way every time we’re late getting home for a meal but when he does, he can be a real handful. I still love him to death. As his trainer Holly was fond of saying, “Dobbs is a really well trained dog but he’s still a dog,” a point which Dobby occasionally reminds me of in spades…