The Return of Captain Crazypants

Jam has been on an extended leave from school due to his limping.  He's been out over a week.  Wednesday was his first day back and you would have thought he was the wild dog of Borneo and had never seen a school before.

He didn't want to follow any commands.  He decided that he didn't want to lie down and be a good boy.  He wanted to play tug with the leash.  Captain Crazypants was back.  Time for obedience lessons.

Sigh.

But then I saw something that our AC shared with us on Facebook: Southeastern tweeted the following yesterday... thought it was important to pass it along.. DogGuideTrainer (AKA Trainer Karen) said... "Dog I'm working was a certified crazypants as a puppy. Now he is my best dog. He just needed job to focus on. Raisers-don't give up!"

And I thought about how Jam looked later that day:

Jam taking a nap in the workroom, a very sleepy puppy.

Not Captain Crazypants at all.  Rather more of a sweet baby boy. OK.  She's right.  Jam needed a job.  Right now his nuggets are sending him all kinds of orders and I needed to give him lots to do to override those crazy thoughts. It's all a question of desire, focus and system overload:

1. Desire: what does a guide dog puppy want most?  To please us.  So give them something to do and then praise them.  A lot.  And then give them more to do.  Create the desire to work.
2. Focus: if they have the desire to work, they will know to focus on you and your commands.  Be consistent and praise often.
3. System overload: when in doubt, do puppy pushups (Thanks trainer Jen!)! I also recommend doing stairs again and again.  

It's only 1.5 months until Jam goes IFT and we still can only manage a 2 minute sit stay without falling into a narcoleptic sleep.  But we are trying.  

We have the desire and the focus.  We just try not to practice at nap time. After all, everyone deserves a good nap.  Sharpens the focus for later.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Taco Night

We took Stephanie and Coastie out for a belated birthday dinner last night.  It was Stephanie's birthday, Coastie still has quite a ways to go until his first birthday. 8-)

Stephanie and Coastie, a yellow lab, pose by the car.  Coastie is sitting by Stephanie's left side.

 We decided to go to our favorite Mexican food restaurant, who just happens to also LOVE our puppies in training: Casa Tina's in Dunedin.

Fred and Jam are waiting for Stephanie and Coastie to join them on the sidewalk.  Jam thinks that Coastie is a wee little thing.

 Fred and Jam have been coming to Casa Tina's for lunch about once a week for months.  So, most of the servers know him.

This photo shows Coastie at the bottom of the photo and Jam at the top lying down under the table. 

The only problem with Casa Tina's is that there isn't a good place for two dogs to lie down.  The quarters are a little tight.  So there was a little bit of the "Mom, he poked his nose over the line!" funny business.  But after awhile, they settled down.  However, Jam remained just a little antsy. A funny kind of antsy.

Jam and Fred walking down the sidewalk with Stephanie and Coastie following.

Sure enough, when we got close to the end of the block, Jam started to show a poo butt.  We yanked his coat off and let him twirl and poo.  Mind you, he had gone after his dinner, so this was a double poo night.  We continued to walk and about a block down, Jam did another twirl.  Off came the coat and he tripled poo'ed.

After Mexican food, even if you are only smelling it, it is advisable to take a good, long walk.

Adventures in Babysitting

 Last night we went to the wedding of the daughter of one of my first friends at school.  Eileen and Tom are the parents of Maggie and Eileen is the health teacher where I am the librarian.  Every year Eileen and I work on a research project with the freshmen class so we have become very good friends over the years.

Even though Jammy has become quite comfortable with the kitchen/crate substitute, given his separation anxiety issues, we wanted to make sure that he wasn’t left alone too long.  So we made some babysitting arrangements.  Christina, who is our collections development librarian at school, also serves as my back up Jam corraler with Jan, our library assistant.  I've trained the both of them in appropriate Southeastern puppy handling behavior so that if I need to leave Jam with them for a meeting he is appropriately taken care of by adults.  This baby sitting job would be an at-home, no-coat job.    

Christina lives right by where the wedding was taking place, so we could drop Jammy off and then pick him up on the way back.  It would work out perfectly!  Christina was free so we made the date and dropped him off.

Here Jam sits in the doorway in a rare moment of nonshadowing, looking off to the left into the foyer and the front door.

When we went back to pick him up, Christina said he was a little nervous about being left and did some heavy breathing for about an hour.  But after he realized the we weren't coming back, he decided to do what he normally does when he thinks he might be left again: he will shadow the person.

Here is a photo of Christina cooking.  You are looking down at her feet and Jam is lying in between her feet.

 So, Jam decided that Christina was his glue and he stuck to her.  He followed her from room to room, even the bathroom.  He watched her cook dinner.
 He watched as she ate dinner.

Jam under foot at the dinner table.

More Jammy between the feet.

Sometimes, he would change it up and be on the feet.

Or sometimes, it was beside the feet.

Finally, at some point during the night, he got relaxed enough that he wasn't compelled to shadow.  He could explore on his own.

Jammy, sitting in the living room.

He decided he would check out the side window and see what was out there.  After all, during his walk, he did smell that there was a crazy cat lady next door and it did smell like there were 100s of cats lurking about. 

Holy Crap!  Crazy cat eyes glowing in the dark at Jammy as he peers out the window!

Boy, did he score on the cat jackpot!  There was a crazy cat just outside on the sidewalk and it was crazy enough to sit there and torment Jammy.

Jammy staring at the cat who is just barely visible on the sidewalk in the upper left of the window.

 He sat, and he sat.

Jammy standing and staring out the window.

Then he stood and stared.  But at the point the cat had had enough and wandered off for more interesting things to do.  Poor Jammy was left to wait it out for us to come home.  He finally curled up and slept.

Eileen, the one with the umbrella, watching her daughter and husband walk down the aisle.

The wedding, by the way, was lovely.

Father and bride walking down the aisle.

The bride was stunning and the wedding was a lot of fun.  We didn't stay out too, too late.  But, I had to get a few dances in!

Another Limping Spell

By Fred
Jam is home with me again, having yet another spell of limping, this time on a back leg. This is the 3rd or 4th time he's had the problem. He's in no apparent pain. He doesn't mind if you touch the leg or give it a massage (in fact, he seems to like that very much). Dr. Woodman has checked him out, with x-rays and tests, and there's no sign of a problem other than a generic case of growing pains, and there's nothing to be done other than rest. He's on doggy pain killers while we wait this out.

Years ago Cheryl and I had a dog named Thud who suffered with hip dysplasia as a small puppy. My mother, who had grown up during the depression and had raised 4 boys after my father died, was surprised when we told her that we planned to have surgery on Thud. "You didn't operate on dogs in my day," she said. But then one day she was at our house when little Thud tried to jump up on the couch and he let out a cry that would break your heart. My mom was in tears and could not be consoled. When we explained that the surgery would make Thud's pain go away, she was suddenly very much in favor of the idea. (He lived a long pain-free life after the surgery.)

And though Jam does not cry out or appear to be in pain, we can tell that he doesn't feel quite right. Even Willow knows that something is wrong. She will go into another room and make a noise that sounds like "roooof", inviting him to come play, which is very much not like her. Who knows what she is thinking--maybe she wonders if he's mad at her?

In any case, we will be glad when crazy Jam is back. He brings more than his share of happiness into the house.

Willow and Jam, Best Friends

Eckerd Graduation

Amy's mom, Uncle, Aunt, my chair, Fred in the front row.  Her dad, grandma and granpa and brother in the next row.

Today, at 8 am to be exact, we were on the beach at Eckerd College watching our niece (well, she calls us Aunt and Uncle, so we are calling her our niece!) graduate from college!  It was awesome. Here is the whole gang.  Mom Barbara in the front row got up at 5:30 am to get us these front row seats.

Friday night we had a smashing meal at Bern's to celebrate the impending matriculation.  At dinner we learned that Amy had won the prestigious John H. Sykes Award.  Amy was given the award for her involvement at Eckerd College with Hillel and with the Holocaust Museum.  One of the reasons I've always been impressed with Amy is that she has shown a devotion to service since high school, when I first met her through her mom (a fellow librarian and dear friend).  At the time, she was Key Club president and had rewritten their website and organized an amazing fundraiser coordinating the activities of tons of kids all while being a very busy senior trying to get into college.

At Eckerd, she continued volunteering by joining the newly instituted Hillel Club her sophomore year.  From there she became director of communications, updating and maintaining their website, creating a fan page for them on Facebook and also a Twitter account.  She also sent out a weekly newsletter to all volunteers, students, parents and alums.  In her senior year, she was elected president and ran board meetings, club meetings, supervised club volunteers and coordinated the special and monthly events, such as monthly shabot dinners.  (Are you getting a sense of why she won the Sykes award? 8-) 

In addition,  in her senior year she also interned at the Holocaust Museum as a donor/fundraising intern, which involved searching for and updating their contact list, researching grant and funding opportunities,  organizing donor packets, and researching possible new donors.  All this while trying to finish her degree.  I must say, I was never that busy during college.  I worked a part-time job, but I know I wasn't that busy!

Looking at the back of a graduating puppy raiser and her Southeastern Guide Dog puppy, a black lab, as they process to their chair.

But even though she was always busy with activities, Amy always had time for us.  And that included our dogs too.  I remember bringing Bingo out to see her.  I won't go into detail, as many of you remember Bingo, but let's just say, it was memorable.  Amy and her brother Brian (and really, her dad as well) have always wanted a dog.  But the family has had too many activities or just worked too many hours to have a pet.  So when Amy selected Eckerd College, she was really excited because she was going to get two dogs by virtue of knowing me and Fred.  So Amy has watched Bingo, HRH Berkeley and now Jam grow from tiny puppies to gangly teens to adults.  And when she spent the night, it was always fun to watch her interact with the dogs.  

Amy had told us at dinner Friday that one of her classmates had a Southeastern Guide Dog puppy and that she watched him grow up every Tue/Thur in class.  She said the the puppy raiser, who also works at Southeastern, was definitely a good rule follower and that the puppy soon had all the rules down and knew that class time was nap time.

Amy, coming down the aisle towards her dad, she is smiling.

Amy appeared soon after the puppy raiser and I got this super blurry photo.  Sigh.  You can make out a big smile though.

Amy, smiling big!

We didn't bring Jam with us to the graduation because we wanted the morning to be about Amy.  We didn't want any distractions.  It was so wonderful to see someone we love walk across that stage and wave that diploma high in the air.

Jam and Willow were waiting comfortably for us in the kitchen when we returned.  They weren't aware that Amy had graduated.  They seemed well rested and relaxed. 

But I know, in my heart, they were barking for joy for her.

A Safe Place

We have found a safe place for Jam to settle when we need him to be at home while we are out and about.  He will tolerate the crate, going it without any fuss, but he is not happy.  You can tell.  And we feel bad about leaving him.

Just by happenstance, though, we came upon the idea of babygating him into the kitchen with Willow.  What's not to like about that?  They have free reign of the kitchen, which is relatively large, and he has a buddy.

The first time we tried it for 30 minutes when we went grocery shopping.  Success!  No wild barking or panicky breathing when we returned.  There was the sneaking suspicion that perhaps one or both of them had searched the counters for something to eat, but nothing could be proven.

So we tried it again.  For a longer period of time.  Again, it was a success.  So on Friday, when we went to Bern's, we were pretty comfortable with leaving Jam in the kitchen.  We checked all the counters and left them both safe and happy.

Jam and Willow lying down in front of one of the kitchen babygates.

The good news.  He was so happy and relaxed that when we got home, he had actually fallen asleep!

Woot!  Sleepy Jam.  Separation anxiety, I am the boss of you!

A Frog's World

By Fred

Yes, the water falls from the sky in big drops. It soaks through the patio stones. The bushes droop under its weight, and the frogs have a new-found confidence because a wet back yard is a frog's favorite world. It is not Jam's world.

Jam prefers to stay inside when it rains. He will reluctantly go out to sit on the porch, but he will not venture beyond on his own, not without a leash, and then with a leash he will only walk along sadly and sigh. He will not pee or poop, not in the backyard when it is raining.

Then at bedtime he is given one more chance. Cheryl and I take turns with an umbrella, giving him all the various encouragements, lies, threats, reassurances, feigned indifference, etc. that we can imagine, because we know that he really needs to go and that the next opportunity will be early the next morning, or rather when he wakes us in the middle of the night, or worse.

And then we remember that our front yard is in a completely different universe for Jam. In the front yard, which is just as rainy and wet, he has no problem at all. Jam is keen to walk along and sniff at every soaking thing, as long as it's not in the back yard.

At the garage door I hold his leash in one hand and the umbrella in the other, and he is thrilled with the idea of walking out into the pouring rain, walking down the sidewalk and into the black night. Within 30 seconds he pees and poops.

Surely we have done something wrong...