The Importance of the Stay Command

Last Monday I had an appointment with a lady parts doctor. Monday being one of my bring Berkeley to school days meant that she was coming to the doctor's office with me. Not a problem. She has been much more mature since her puppy camp with John and Angel and seems to be barking less and not being so autocratic.

Good for us!

This was a new doctor, so I had to go to their concierge services to be checked in first. Berkeley went into a down under without a problem and went right to sleep for the whole interview. Good girl.

Then we went up the elevator and into the waiting room where we waited patiently to be called. The nurse looked at us a bit funny, but decided that she would choose to ignore the dog at my side completely and made no mention of her AT ALL. I thought this a bit strange, but, hey, whatever gets you through the day. Berkeley decided to snub her as well and when we hit the examining room she did a down under the chair and a stay and went to sleep.

When the doctor arrived, he was delighted to see Berkeley and asked all sorts of questions about her. She poked her head out and thumped her tail a few times (she is quite the tail wagger), but ultimately decided that our discussion was boring (read: didn't involve her) and went back to sleep.

At this point the doctor stands and gets one of those full coverage (ha ha!) paper sheets and says I need to take off my skirt and he will come back to do the examination. Berkeley is still in a down stay under the chair and is still asleep, so I disrobe and jog over to the medical table with the sheet around me sarong style. The examining table is about 10 feet away from where Berkeley is sleeping under the chair. Berkeley is directly in front of me and to my back is the door where the doctor will come through. Now that I am half naked and on the table I am starting to realize that I have made a huge error in judgment but am unsure if I have time to correct it or even how I can correct it. Will she STAY? Do I have time to jump off? Should I jump off? Is she deep asleep? Should I test it?

Before I can try anything, the doctor walks in and Berkeley comes ALIVE!

"People! People have entered my realm!" She emerges from under her chair. I half stand on the examining table and get a blast of cold air on my bare behind. I sit down quickly.

"BERKELEY! STAY!" She barely registers that I am there. After all, I am half naked and nearly shouting, she is Her Royal Highness. Why would she deign to see a naked crazy person yelling commands when there are professionals in the room?

She walks towards the doctor. "Stay!"

"It's alright. She's pretty." I gnash my teeth. Did I ask if she was pretty? NO! I have no panties on! I can't get off this table! I can't do anything.

"Berkeley, come here." That she recognizes. She finally looks at me and walks over. I bend over, carefully mind you, and grab for her leash. However, the examining table is REALLY TALL. This is a bad idea. I see this. The lady parts doctor sees it and so does the unseeing nurse who still is trying to act like there isn't a dog in the room.

"Just let her run free," my doctor says.

Ah, what the hell. This will be an interesting examination.

Note: There will be no photos for this post.

To the Mall!

Yesterday, we went to our big monthly meeting and it was held at Countryside Mall. I learned that Malls are important exposures because the dogs are easily confused and have accidents in malls because the ceilings are so high and there is so much vegetation around that they think they are outdoors. So we are encouraged to take our pups to malls as often as we can (did you read that Fred?!). We were also told to bring lots of clean up supplies in anticipation of many accidents.



Here Fred and Her Royal Highness (HRH) practice the Under-Down command. Since we learned that SEGD has the dogs do this for meals we now have her eat all her meals from an under down command from a chair. She is very good at this command at 14 weeks. 8-) Amazing what motivation dinner will give her! Marcy was in charge of the meeting and had us go on a scavenger hunt. Puppies had the second floor only, but the bigger dogs had the 1st and 2nd floors. Countryside Mall has tile AND CARPET. GRRRR. Not good. As soon as the scavenger hunt started, the bowels let loose. Not HRH's, thanks be. At one point as we headed over to the Disney store there was a line of poops about seven cubits long with a couple of puppy raisers with bags and cleanup wipes getting rid of the evidence as fast as they could!

We kept HRH a bit back from the poo-line thinking that if she smelled it she might think it was ok to do it. So we hung out by Yankee Candle for a little bit, which stalled us from a good time in the scavenger hunt (this is the beginning of my excuse for not winning the hunt, can you tell? 8-)



The next stop was the Disney store. They were very nice. Startled, but friendly. Then we stopped to watch the ice skaters, because afterall, we wanted her to get the full mall experience (excuse #2!). While we were gazing at the ice rink, I noticed an older couple coming towards us. The man had his arm stuck out in front of him with his fingers open and grasping. He was several feet ahead of his wife. She was hurrying toward him and me, saying, "You can't touch her! You can't touch her!" He kept coming toward us with that one arm extended, rather like a zombie only without the lifeless heaving to and fro and dead eyes and, I suppose, the desire to eat human brains.

I stepped up to him and said, "I'm sorry, but she's got her coat on and she's working. You can't pet her now."

"See, I told you. You can't pet them. They are working." He seemed very disappointed.

I tried to mollify the situation. "She is very cute though in her coat, isn't she? She's hard to resist. We're having a meeting in the mall, so you will see lots of us morning."



Our next stop was Build a Bear. Fred was afraid HRH would go nuts and ravage the stuffed animals so he waited outside with her. Inside, the saleslady told me a sweet story of a blind person and their guide dog who came in to get another build a bear. The guide dog had torn it up. She said the dog seemed very sad and contrite about it.

We have had no word on Bingo (or Jim or Rob!) so I asked Marcy to check for us. It's been 5 weeks and we are a little nuts wondering what has happened to him. She said she would check and let us know. She had gotten some news on x-rays and would send us an email.



After the meeting we went to lunch. HRH was so worn out that she passed out under the table. That was nice.