Kayaking with Bingo

Our local meeting this month was a puppy kayaking meeting.

When we arrived at the meeting, there was a group gathered on the shore. I was pretty excited about the kayaking and Bingo seemed excited too. A bit too excited. His excitement manifested itself in lunging. At every dog there. I had to get near a kayak in order to go kayaking, but there were puppies near the kayaks.

Lunge. "Bingo, No!" Correction. Lunge. Trudge back up the hill. Look at the kayaks. Try again.

Finally, there was a break. Donna and the perfect Biscuit (I swear that dog is an angel!) arrived on shore and there were three kayaks lined up without any dogs and raisers ready to get in them. I sprinted down to grab one. I asked our local coordinator Donna, not Biscuit's raiser but the one who supplied the marvelous kayaks, which would be a good kayak for us to use. She pointed out two suitable kayaks.

She had also told us which way the tide was flowing so we were to head north so we wouldn't have to paddle against the tide and need to be picked up by car! I dragged Bingo over to a kayak and he eyed it distastefully.

"Bingo, in." He was standing in a couple of inches of water and tilted his head down to look at his feet. Then he turned his head to look at the puppy getting in the boat next to us. I felt a lunge coming on. I grabbed his front legs and pulled them into the kayak. As soon as they were in, I leaned over to grab his back legs. His front legs popped out of the boat and into the water on the other side.

"Bingo!"

I tried pulling on the front end, but he did a little hop and jumped out of the boat so that he was now on the opposite side of the kayak facing me all innocence. Damn. Time to start over. I pulled on the front legs. In. Out.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Push me.

Pull me.

I've read about this somewhere. Ack! Finally as one end is hunching to jump out I catch it and shove both ends in the hole in the kayak. There! Dog in boat. Dog facing me in boat. Is the dog supposed to be facing me? I have a small moment of panic. I stare at Bingo. Bingo stares back balefully. Better to have him looking at me than looking at something else I figure. So I sit down in the boat. While it still on the shore.

Hmmmm. Problem. 85 lb dog. More than 85 lb me. Kayak. Small 10-12 year old boy standing at side of kayak offering to push us into the water. Simple physics tell me this won't work. I glare at Bingo. Mind you, there is a large paddle next to me that I have shoved under some stretchy strings (stretchy strings being the technical term for them) to hold it in place as I figure out what I am going to do to help this small boy push me and Bingo out to sea. I shove my two feet out of the kayak and try to lift my bottom up and haul the kayak back a few inches.

Bingo eyes me warily. This lurching about is not particularly confidence inspiring and I can see a thought forming in his small pea brain that perhaps leaping from the kayak into the water and fleeing is the safest option.

"PUSH!" I yell at the small boy and I cram my feet on the sand and shove backwards until I feel a certain bouyancy that indicates that we are indeed afloat. "THANK YOU!!!" The small boy smiles.

Bingo cast a look over my shoulder at the shore as Donna, local area coordinator and kayaker, yells, "Do you know how to steer?"

"What? Steer!? No." I think that might be panic on her face or shock, but I say,"I'm not going far. I'll figure it out."

My plan is to go out just far enough to make a circle and then come back in. I know Bingo. He's hatching up some evil plot to leap out at another kayak or perhaps the kayak is rocking away all thoughts of lunging and I'm doing him a disservice. Perhaps my fears are all my own. Either way, I am taking no chances.

Small circle at sea. No chance of Bingo leaping out and swimming to shore.

Jan and her collie are in the foreground of this photo and her dog is facing her, so I guess that is the proper placement of dog and kayak. Bingo seems to be staring out at some distant something. That boy always has a plan. Small circle at sea. It's a good plan.

On our way back, Bingo is taking in the sights. He was a good boy throughout the small circle at sea. I even figured out how to steer. I don't think I actually did a circle. More like a freehand triangly thing, but I got us back to shore where the small boy was waiting like a prince to help us make a landing. (And his peach of a sister took all of the photos!! Thanks very much!)

Bingo did decide about three feet out that he had had enough and jumped out and dragged us in. I admit, I did shriek just a bit. A tiny bit. Donna, local area coordinator and kayaker (our group has a lot of Donnas!), had us take this photo with Bingo facing out. A much better photo, but I think it would have been a very dangerous paddle.


"Is that all?" Donna asked. "Don't you want to kayak some more?"

"Oh, I don't want to be a kayak hog." I gestured broadly with my arm. There are so many puppies who want to kayak." The place was nearly deserted, although there were plenty of puppy raisers up on the hill. Donna looked at me and grinned.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I want everyone to have a chance to kayak! It was such fun." My heart was pounding and I could hear the blood rushing by my ears. I could see in my mind's eye Bingo leaping off the boat and dragging me with him. I could see the kayak, abandoned, drifting off in the bay. Then Bingo and I would wash up on shore completely soaked: him happy and cheerful with a huge grouper in his mouth, me horribly bedraggled and spitting up sea water. "It was such fun."

Bingo's Impact

I got a call last week from Chuck telling me that on July 1st we would be getting a black lab female puppy. That exciting news heralded the bittersweet news that Bingo was in all probability going In For Training (IFT) in July. Despite being a blockhead (in some respects, in other respects he is a sweet boy), he would in all likelyhood be joining some of his littermates and starting the next phase of his journey to become a guidedog.

It got me to thinking about the impact of Bingo on the school, on us and on his future life partner. Some of you may know Mike Jernigan (who is a spokesman for Paws for Patriots (this link has a short video of Mike and Brittani and a description of how Paws for Patriots got started) for SEGD). I had an opportunity to have a fairly in-depth conversation with him and his wife and it happened to be on Bingo's birthday. He had Brittani with him and we tried to get the dogs together, but Bingo was just too excited. Leslie and Mike were very sweet saying, "He was very good the first 10 seconds."

"That was shock." I said. I looked back at Bingo who was not being a good boy and was on a tie down and was straining to get to Brittani. I shut the office door on him.

Mike talked about what an impact Brittani had made on his life. I want that same connection for Bingo and his partner. That's what this whole process has been about. And I know that when I push away the thought of driving up to Southeastern and opening the door to the car and saying, "Bingo, out," for the last time, there will come a payment due. I know it will be sad (Fred might even go so far as to say traumatic). However, I remember the main goal: he's someone's chance at freedom.

But I also know that I will not be alone in my grief. One of the lower division faculty members came up to me on Friday when Bingo was out of coat to pet him and told me that her daughter had been begging her to get a dog. She was holding firm and said no. Her daughter started to cry, "Well, at least I have Bingo!"

Bingo isn't just my dog. He's the school's dog. I walk down the hall with him and it's like walking with a rock star.

"There's Bingo!"

"It's Bingo!"

"Look! It's Bingo. Do you see him!"

And it happens every day I bring him to school. For some kids, it's enough to just catch a glimpse of him walking by. That's their dog. Bingo is theirs.

And so next year, when our new little girl comes to school, they will adopt her and make her theirs as well, but I can guarantee you that they will want the Bingo report cards and status updates. Whomever gets Bingo needs to know that they are acquiring a dog with a huge extended family who loves him and is very concerned about his welfare and happiness.

Poop Walk

Our Tuesday class was a little unusual. We got in a single line and took the dogs down the sidewalk on Gulf Blvd. (for some traffic exposure), and then we cut over and walked back on the beach. Bingo took the lead at first and was doing pretty well--he has no fear of traffic and is not at all timid about being in the lead. But when we swapped places and moved to the rear, Bingo started pulling and even crossing in front of me at times.

Coming back along the beach the dogs were doing really well. It was a beautiful day. Not too hot. Parents and kids were all watching and smiling at the line of dogs in their blue coats, all being good. Bingo was second to last in line, doing better now but still not quite right. Then someone spotted it--something on the white sand. What is that? Poop, someone said. Where did it come from? Bingo, said the person at the rear.

Bingo? But we had not slowed down one bit. Bingo was on a tight leash, ahead of me but not far enough ahead that I could see anything pop out his rear end. Of course, I had forgotten the plastic poop bags. I forgot because I forget things and because Cheryl was not there (she's had a cold) and because she is normally is there and normally would have remembered the bags. Fortunately, a guy nearby had a plastic bag and I was able to clean it up pretty quickly.

It was a very small poop and a surprise poop, at least for me, because he had a giant poop at home before leaving for class and because I'd given him a chance to busy, busy (poop) just before the walk.

And now I feel bad that his crossing in front of me on the walk may have been a signal to poop. And I should have remembered to put some poop bags in my pocket. As Cheryl likes to say, bad daddy, bad daddy.

When Being the Consolation Prize Means You Got the Best Prize

At our school we have something called the Reading Counts hat. You get it when you reach a certain number of points. Now, some librarians think that the Reading Counts program promotes an unnecessarily competitive form of reading that reduces it from pleasure reading to a sport. A regurgitation of facts sport where children choose to read only books that have Reading counts tests and only read those books that have the highest point values. Not that I have an opinion on the matter, though...

Well, my friend the lower division librarian has a dream where all children read for pleasure and all children are rewarded for reading whether they reach their goal or not. It just so happened that in years past if you didn't reach your Reading Counts goal, you didn't get to go to the Reading Counts pool party at the end of the year. You had to sit in the classroom while the other kids splashed away outside. So she and I came up with a consolation prize: reading with Bingo!


Here are the 15 third graders who got to read with Bingo and were EXCITED about it! They got into groups of three and read books to Bingo. Reading and Bingo: two great things that go great together.

May 18, 2010: Happy Birthday Bingo!

Tuesday was a big day for Bingo. It was his birthday! So I bought two full size sheet cakes (feeding at least 80 a piece) and two half sheet cakes to celebrate the occasion. We had a cute slide that was shown in convocation and thanked all the students and faculty for their help in getting Bingo ready for his training. I also told them that he might be going back for training in July and that we would be getting a new puppy for the next school year if that happened. I also told them that I had bought cake for them and that it was in the library.

You would have thought these kids had recently gone through a famine, or perhaps were related to locusts. It was quite a cake mob scene. I guess this is why Marie lost her head. People go nuts over cake.

I mean, the cake was good, but really! Bingo was just beside himself. He was pumped the whole day. He had visitors all day, he got birthday cards and presents. In fact, it was a very busy day for him.

Here he is with two of his presents. He loved them so much that he wouldn't let them go and proceeded to sleep on them. I kept one in the office and one at home.

It's been a long journey, from puppy to teen. Now he is one. The school year is almost over and the summer is approaching. But our work is not done.

Too Many Parties

By Fred
Following Bingo's big blowout at school with four cakes and hundreds of kids having fun, he went to yet another party in the evening, this time at our weekly training class, where he and his favorite brother, Jim, got some free nose-to-nose time on their birthdays, at least until we had to separate them (yes, Bingo started it).

It was Bingo's best class ever, though a cynical person might not want to give him any credit. Maybe his good behavior was due to the fact that he was partied-out?

No, Bingo gets full credit--an A for effort. He loves training class so much that his heart starts beating fast. He starts huffing and puffing and his ears start ringing, which is why he doesn't always Sit when he should--he can't even hear the command (at least that's my theory). And he loves people so much that it clouds his judgement (not unlike a teenager in love). And he really loves other dogs--his biggest distraction of all.

But most of all, he's had one year of living with two first-time guide-dog puppy raisers who, despite their good intentions, have not been perfect (to put it nicely). Yes, he's had a lot to overcome and we are both proud of him.

Here he is toward the end of class, walking the circle with Cheryl and looking more than a little worn out.


The next morning Cheryl asked Bingo if he was ready to go to school, and here's the look he gave her. So he got to stay home and have a quiet day. Happy birthday, Bingo.

Read, Bingo Read!

Jan surprised me today be creating this marvelous READ poster with Bingo as the subject. Doesn't he look majestic?