Happy

[kestrell]

Usually around the first of the month I have a list of things I need/want to buy, but I woke up this morning and realized that, except for some new socks, I really didn't want anything.

So I just donated some money to
4 Paws for Ability
http://www.4pawsforability.org/
after reading this great NY Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/magazine/wonder-dog.html?_r=1&hp
--I love the way that they get animals to people who have invisible disabilities, or who may be worried that they quote aren't disabled enough unquote to qualify for a dog.

Also, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, but those dogs with the butterfly ears sound adorable.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for spreading the joy. Service dogs can be so amazing (and so much work). It's interesting that new dog training centers are popping up all over. We've got two in Madison:

occupaws.org
Traditionally skilled Guide Dogs, but with extra home training as well as kid training. These folks have hit the ground with many paws indeed in terms of PR: they're running a full-side-of-the-bus ad of a lovely Golden pup in a training vest, labelled "Future Bus Rider."

The other is wags.net, which nominally stands for Wisconsin Academy for Graduate Service Dogs. These folks also work with inmates at the med-security women's prison; the dogs go live with the women for four months and come out with excellent obedience skills. And of course it may be saving the sanity of some of those prisoners.

I wonder if the new kinds of training -- positive-only, "clicker" reinforcement -- makes possible a more decentralized system? My old roomie's first dog from Long Island had a "nasty collar;" chain links with curved spikes on the inside. Nowadays I can imagine total strangers yelling at her for that.

Have you ever thought of a dog for yourself?

[kestrell]

My feeling is that one reason for the increasing number and variety of animal companion traning schools is that it is similar to sports, medicine, andtechnology, in that it is a kind of technology where the basic foundational information increases exponentially, so people feel increasingly confident about adding to that information or experimenting with new ideas altogether. If you look atold sports records, what trainers thought was possible for the human body and what the athletes themselves had as their expectations for meeting or surpassing the record always turned out to actually be something which was a lot less fixed and certain. I'm sure that there is a name for this phenomenon.

I occasionally think about getting a dog, but I'm not sure I feel up to caring for a dog, a lot of times I just feel that I am able to take care of myself, although since starting the Prozac, I have felt my overall health improving (more energy, better able to concentrate, losing weight, less joint achiness).

[jesse_the_k]

That's an intriguing viewpoint. Yes, the more we know about animal brains and capacities permits us to entrust them with more tasks. And the more we know about how they learn enables us to train them to do those tasks. And those are technologies too!

(Who knows, maybe the dogs are having a seminar (while playing poker) on "human communication skills: vest or harness?")

Woo hoo about drugs helping!

ETA: Having seen how civilians interact with service dogs, I'd only partner with one if it provided unique capacities. Even someone as skilled at stranger-management as you might find herself overwhelmed with the babytalk and the fussing the dog gets. OTOH, I've known one handler who had a Boxer, and that forestalled a lot of kitchy-woo nonsense cause they are imposing dogs.

[kestrell]

Re: civilians with companion animals: oh, I would be a total bitch, because I already get indignant when people flout the "working animal" sign and insist that they can't help themselves. I witness this all the time at conventions, and by people who verbally acknowledge that they know that they are not supposed to pet the working animal right before they pet the animal anyway. Talk about feeling that the rules don't apply to you. Also, it's always adults, I have never witnessed a kid doing this.

I know that trainers try to match the size of the dog to suit the person, and most short women I know have dogs on the small size, but I would definitely want a *big* dog. I love large dogs, because a, nobody messes with someone who has a big dog, but also, b, big dogs always seem to be more mellow than the hyper little ones. I've always been curious what kind of dog I would get matched with, as the match process of person to dog has always struck me as amazingly accurate. I've met introvert dogs, extrovert dogs, dignified dogs, and even a party dog who drank beer (but only expensive beer).

[jesse_the_k]

I've had the good fortune to meet a wide range of service dog breeds. Sounds like you would have dug "Bear," a Newfoundland who weighed twice his handler (but she was almost 6 foot tall). The one with the Boxer had a great canned line, "I have to ask you to ignore the animal entirely or he will become useless to me." Plus Boxers just aren't cuddly. I know a great big woman with a wiggly little Pit Bull, who can climb up on counters to fetch things through sheer hip dancing and tail rotation. If only they lived longer, greyhounds might be a good match -- they are mellow as caramel, as well as soft and kind and cuddly.

I think you're right on the mellow vs hyper tendencies for big vs small dogs. Between dogs it's all about territory and rank: the little ones are readily pushed around so develop a manic personality to counteract. I don't know what happens for service animals, whether they go to the dog park and have dog-dog interactions much, or whether it's pretty confined to their human family. (But dogs do love their human families--that's why they threw in with us so long ago. Last week they found a 30,000 year old dog skull hanging with humans -- this links to the WBUR story.

I have met some fairly non-yappy little dogs, though. Jack Russell Terriers are painfully smart; if they're not adequately challenged and herded than they're super annoying, but they can also be total honey pies. I know an English Setter who's around 12 pounds, and is very attentive to her people. In fact, she's saved one of their lives multiple times when she's awoken the simply sleeping one to the fact her partner's blood sugar is almost uncountable. They didn't train the dog for this; I like to think the dog feels like it's "rent due."