"Shut the drawer"

I thought I'd post this video I made awhile ago of Keisha shutting the drawers in the kitchen. She learns things pretty quickly, and sometimes it's hard to keep up with her! I'll make some more videos and add them to this blog when I get a new tripod. The one I have now is broken and I need both hands free when I'm teaching her new things.

Happy 1st Birthday Keisha!

It's hard to believe, but Keisha turned 1 today! It only seems like a few months ago that we went to pick her up.

She's grown so much! She's almost as tall as Sophie now, and you can probably tell from the photo that she's no longer a little puppy. She even has her "big husky howl" now. Her voice has changed and gotten deeper.

She has calmed down quite a bit too! She still runs and leaps and can't seem to stay still, but every now and then she lays down for awhile. She even likes cuddles now! She also likes sitting up on my lap and watching Sophie. She looks down at her like she's saying "I'm up with mom and your not!" It's like she thinks my lap is shrinking! She doesn't realize she is growing. Pretty soon I'll have a fully grown husky on my lap trying to cuddle! She's even treating Sophie a lot better now! That's an accomplishment on it's own!

I went to the store earlier today to buy her something for her birthday. It's a small store, and the only think I could find was a package of Busy Bones. They are for small to medium dogs and have two in a pack so I thought they could share them. I gave the package to Keisha and she carried it around a bit before I opened it and gave them a bone each. Keisha loved hers. She ate most of it before I took it away. I didn't want her to be sick from eating all of it so she'll get the other half tomorrow. Sophie sniffed hers but didn't eat it. She don't really chew on anything besides her Nylabone.

They laid down together for awhile with their bones before supper. They are both laying down to have naps now. I also made a video of them earlier and I'll add it to an entry when I edit it. Right now I'm going to go make supper for myself. It's almost 10:30pm.

Explaining Why I Have Two Working Dogs

I was just thinking about how to explain why I have two working dogs to people. Usually if you see a guide dog or service dog they are alone with their handler, not working alongside another guide or servie dog.

Things were simple when I just had Sophie. When we went out it was just me and her and if I wanted to go somewhere nothing held us back. If I traveled I packed her bowls, some food, her bone and a favorite toy or two and off we went. If we were going out for awhile I made sure I had her foldable bowl, water and some bags to clean up after her. I didn't have to plan ahead when doing things at all. She has as much right as anyone else to go into any public place and if anyone had an issue with it I knew I could call the Police and have them deal with it either by giving out a fine, or even jail time to the person or company that refused us acess.

Since getting Keisha things have changed a bit. Now I have to plan things out more. She is still a puppy in training and I won't be able to teach her guide work until her bone plkates have fused. She will be doing some pulling and I don't want her to injure herself because she isn't fully grown.
I know some people would have a problem with seeing someone work with two service dogs at the same time. It just don't seem "right" to some people because they aren't use to seeing it. If we decide to go on vacation we have to talk to the airline to make sure we can take both dogs intot he cabin of the airplane with us, talk to the hotel to make sure we can have both of them stay in our room without being charged (they can't charge extra for working animals), and deal with access into the places we go when we go out.

The biggest issue out of these is the flying one. I know the best thing to do is call ahead and explain to someone that I have two service dogs and I need to fly with both of them because I am blind and a quadriplegic. Sophie is my guide dog and she guides me, while Keisha is trained to do service dog tasks to help me. I work with both of them right now because Sophie was trained as my guide dog long before I became a quadriplegic and wasn't trained to do service dog tasks and I am training Keisha to take over Sophie's work so she can retire. But, I can't train Keisha to do guide work yet because she isn't fully grown and there is a lot of pulling involved and she can't pull safely until she is fully grown. She will eventually learn to guide me along with doing the service dog work and Sophie will retire.

Is that too confusing? Should I write a letter and send it to someone high up at whatever airline we choose. If I do that and get a response I could print it off and bring a copy with me when we travel.

I've heard so many stories of bad experience traveling with guide and service dogs on airplanes before. I've never had any major problems with Sophie but she has her guide dog id card from the school and things. You don't legally need this, but the airlines and other buisnesses still say you do even though it's not written in any law. They get so full of themselves sometimes.

Do you think the way I explained it is too confusing? Do you know a different way that would work? Maybe I should type out something and print some copies off becuase it would get pretty annoying having to explain the same thing before booking the flight, to the hotel before booking it, at the airport when we arrive, going through security, to the customs people, at the gate, to the flight attendants, to customs again, to the rental car people, at the hotel etc.

It's easy to say "she's my guide dog" ten different times, but having to explain things further can take up a lot of time! Even now people don't think Sophie is my guide dog because I'm a wheelchair user. They assume she is my "service dog" because you can't be blind and use a wheelchair! I had to go and hog up all the disabilities to confuse people lol! I have to admit I get some twisted enjoyment when the people around me don't realize I can't see though! I've been living here over a year and the people here still don't realize I can't see, or that I'm a quad. Apparently I don't look or act blind and people assume if you can move your arms at all then you can't be a quad. It is going to be fun at the starting line when I get my racing wheelchair wearing dark sunglasses (yeah, I'll go for the blind look), and "blind racer" written across the back of my chair though! That'll freak the other racers out a bit lol. I wonder if it wil be like when I use to play basketball and everyone would just get out of my way lol?!

A Good Looking Husky and She Knows It

As you may have noticed from the photo Keisha and Sophie are getting along a lot better lately. Keisha has calmed down quite a bit, and Sophie tolerates her more because of it.

I took Keisha downstairs with me earlier today to get the mail. When we got on the elevator she saw herself in the mirror and put her paws up on the railing to get a better look! When I told her to get down she decided to put her paws up on my legs so she could admire herself in the mirror that way! She's just like Sophie when it comes to mirrors. Whenever Sophie walks past a mirror, even if it's on the side of an escalator she slows down to watch herself! They both know how good looking they are.

This was the first time I left Sophie alone and took Keisha with me. I think she handled it pretty well. She was waiting in the hallway for us as soon as we came back in the door, and she was sitting instead of laying down and waiting like usual. I don't think she was too upset by it though. We were only gone for a few minutes and I didn't make a big deal out of it on purpose.

I was thinking about taking Keisha outside, but there was a lot of mail to carry so we came back upstairs. By the time we got back up here it was raining. I thought it would start raining before we left, but didn't think it would so quickly. Things cleared up after that, but the rain started again a little while ago and we just started having thunder. We have had record rainfall this summer, and I'm so sick of it!

I'm going to go finish watching Two and a Half Men and hopefully the weather will clear up again pretty soon. I really don't like storms because we do have funnel clouds around here, and I can't see them, even if it's in the middle of the day. They don't usually turn into tornadoes, but they still stress me out!

Upset Stomachs

I did something I'm regretting yesterday evening. I went to the store and had to get some dog food there for Sophie and Keisha to eat for a day until I did a grocery order. I knew the store wouldn't have a lot to choose from, but it's the best I could do at the time.

They had Dog Chow, Puppy Chow, Purina and Beniful. The tiny bags were like $8 and I really didn't want to pay that much for dog food that isn't actually that good. After all it was just for a meal.

I decided to get a couple of cans of Pedigree instead. I got beef and chicken and thought it would be fine. When I got back home I let Sophie pick the can she wanted open and she choose the beef. I gave her and Keisha half a can each and they seemed to really like it.

Keisha went outside right after she ate and had some diarrhea. It wasn't watery or anything, but wasn't really solid either. I didn't think it could have been the food because it barely had time to even enter her stomach! I decided to just keep an eye on her and see if she had any more. It's been hours now and she is still ok. She had a bath and is happily laying in her crate.

Hours after they ate Sophie got up from the floor and ran towards the door. She layed down with her nose up againt it and I quickly let her out. She ran outside and had quite a bit of diarrhea herself! She has gone out a couple of times since. I bought her bed out into the living room for her and gave her Duckey (her favorite toy). She isn't drinking any water, but had some ice cubes earlier. She doesn't drink a lot anyway, so that's not really worrying me. She has a full bowl of cold water next to her if she wants any.

She's laying on her bed next to the door with Duckey under her head now. She's not happy because she is on a leash so she can go in and out whenever she needs to. There are openings at either end of the fence that goes around the patio area here where she could get out into the neighbours areas.

I know now that it was the food that made their stomach's upset. Neither of them are use to canned food and I definetly won't be making that same mistake again! Sophie's stomach is pretty sensative, and I feel really bad about making the decision I made!

I really hope she is feeling a lot better soon! I'll make her some boiled rice and chicken when her stomach settles down. Hopefully she will be better today!

Things have been busy around here

I know, I know I haven't written in awhile. Things have been really busy around here. Things are going well though. Keisha and Sophie are even getting better! Sure Keisha will still tackle Sophie when she gets bored, but as long as she has something better to do she totally ignores her!

I just finished giving Keisha a bath. She's been shedding a lot lately and it's really hot outside so I thought I'd give her a nice cool shower. She even sat under the water and relaxed a bit cooling off. I didn't ask her to, but she decided that it was a nice way to cool herself off.

She's in front of the door right now and has been going in and out since her bath. I'm going to sit down and groom her when she dries off, but for now she seems happy just to be cooled off.

When Julian gets back we are going to take her out to one of our favorite restaurants with us and Sophie. That's going to be an experience for sure! I thought I'd take her when it's not busy and sit outside on the patio with her. By the time we walk there she'll be tired out a bit and want to lay down, so that will work on our side! I'm sure she will be great though. We were in for a pleasnat surprise at the Wheels In Motion event, and I'm sure her first time at a restraunt will go just as well!

Thunder and fire alarms in the same night

You know how in the last entry I mentioned Keisha howling when the fire alarms went off? Well, shortly after I wrote about it, at about 3:50am have a guess what happened. That's right. The fire alarms started going off, and Keisha started howling!

I had a feeling it would happen, because it's been a little while since we had an alarm. It's always the same people who sets it off at really odd hours of the morning. Every time the alarms start I know there's a very good chance it is coming from the 30th floor of this building. When will people realize that when their smoke detector goes off when cooking something at 3am they should shut it off before the main alarms start going off? They should get fined each time. That would probably teach them!

I'm thinking about teaching Keisha to get her harness and leash and bring them to me when she hears the alarms. They happen pretty frequently, so there's plenty of opportunity to practice! I'm thinking if I teach her to go get her leash and harness when I ask her, I can ask her to get it when the alarm starts, and after awhile she will get it automatically.

I don't even worry about the alarms anymore. I know I probably should, because one of these days it could be a real fire but after so many false alarms you get out of the habit of worrying if the building is going to burn down. When I hear the alarms now, I just curse the people who set it off, and go about whatever I was doing, or calming Keisha down while I wait for the announcements saying that the fire dept. has been called, they are accessing the situation, and that it was a false alarm.

Awhile after the fire alarms stopped I was finishing some laundry and decided to try Sophie's raincoat on Keisha. I wanted to compare the size Sophie was when I got her to Keisha's size. It's still a bit big for Keisha, but she's almost as long as Sophie in her body. She's also only about an inch and a half shorter than Sophie right now. I also tried Sophie's winter coat on Keisha just for fun. I attached her to the leash on the patio door handle so she wouldn't dive into the laundry I had on the floor in the hallway and hunt for socks to eat!

Before you start thinking about how odd I am for dressing up my guide dog, I got her the rain coat because she has to work in all kinds of weather and takes a long time to dry. I'd rather put a raincoat on her than have a wet dog that gets everything she touches damp all day, and smells like, well a wet dog. I got her the coat for winter because it goes down past -30°C (-22°F) or colder in the winter, and I can't just leave her home and go out alone. She also has boots for the winter because the salt that is used on sidewalks and streets makes her paws crack and bleed and it becomes very painful.

With Keisha I will use the boots in the winter, just so she will be more comfortable when working outside, but because huskies are bred for cold weather she won't need a coat. She also doesn't smell like a typical wet dog when she is wet, which surprised me a bit. I read that huskies don't smell when wet, but didn't believe it until I found out for myself. It was a very pleasant surprise!