Working Dogs

Today, there was a second grade class who was doing a unit on working dogs and whose teacher had asked me to bring Jam by as a special guest to close out the unit.  I said I would be glad to bring him by and could talk a little about Jam and about guide dogs in training as well.  So I prepared a little slide show. 

If you are interested, here it is:

Of course, all you will see are my little photos as I generally use photos and then talk to back up the photos.  So, the presentation starts off about Jam and how he will grow into his harness and then progresses into Jam in the Santa hat, which leads into a discussion on obedience commands.  (Odd, I know, but he is in a down stay.) Then, we go into the more specialized commands of checking out books...haha, just kidding.  They loved that. 8-) But moving on, I then talked about some odd facts such as the weirdest puppy name is Oko, which is Polish for eye and that there are 200 puppy raisers in 7 states in the southeast.  Then I asked them if they had seen Harry Potter or had it read to them (they are in 2nd grade) and most had seen it.  I introduced them to Jam's friend Hermione, who is also HP's friend in the books/movies, which led into a discussion of the coat and what to do when you see someone with the coat on.  Then we started talking about the certified trainers and what Jam will do when he leaves me. I explained about matching a puppy with a visually impaired person.  That the trainers look for temperament (personality) and gait (speed).  I also explained that Jam has a fast gait and he isn't very cuddly.  Then we got into a very cool discussion about intelligent disobedience.  That was fun.  And we ended it all with a fun video of Jam being a goofball.  That in essence was my talk.

Along with 50 million questions from the 2nd graders.  What could be better than that? No problems, right? Easy, peasy.  Did I mention that 30 minutes before my talk was to begin the power went out to the entire school?

Oh, and the Headmaster was invited to the talk.  And he accepted.

Oh, and did I mention that awesome software the runs that cool presentation you see above lives in the cloud.  The really wonderful cloud that when the power is cut to your school and your wi-fi is cut off means YOU CAN'T ACCESS YOUR PRESENTATION!

AND 15 LITTLE KIDS ARE WAITING FOR YOU.

AND THE HEADMASTER IS GOING TO BE THERE.

Yea.  Did I mention that?

No pressure.  I'll just redo it.  I have 15 minutes.  I can do that.

I have 10 minutes.  I can finish it.

Done.  From memory!  A brand new power point presentation minus the cool photo of the dangers above photo (not on my hard drive) recreated from memory in 10 minutes.  On a Monday morning on the day after daylight savings change weekend.  Someone give me a hoo-rah!

The presentation went really well and Jan took some great photos.  Below is a really cute one of me and Jam.

I also heard lots about the Iditarod, which they also studied.

All in all it was a very fun time, even if I was slightly panicked at the beginning.  Jam would have preferred a bit more opportunity to lick some faces, I think.