Day 6

We finished our first week of class and things are starting to settle into a little bit of a routine. We arrived for our Saturday class at 9 am with dog in tow. Each recipient shared with the group how their evening had gone. Everyone had a good night and it was interesting to hear who had a dog that ate quickly, whose dog DIDN'T toilet at all (!), who had a dog that liked to play for two hours, etc. We had a lecture about how dogs learn, which augmented information from previous lectures.

Lunch was our first field trip. The goal was to practice appropriate behavior in a public setting. We had intended to go to Cracker Barrel, but the one hour wait was too long. So, after re-loading all eleven students and their dogs back into our vehicles, we went down the road to Bob Evans. We were seated right away and all our dogs behaved very well in public. A well trained service dog should be "invisible" in public settings, and the dogs successfully met this goal. All our dogs were tucked out of the way under the tables and were silent. As a matter of fact, our dog has not barked once since the beginning of class on Monday! The Bob Evans staff was very accommodating (and one even knew she shouldn't pet the dogs even though she really wanted to!), and made it a very enjoyable experience. Sorry we don't have any pictures of the big trip.

After lunch was a lecture on the law and service dogs. Once again, we learned a lot of very good information. We have a handout with all the legal information we could want or need and we found out that a service dog is considered a "medical device" by legal definition, not a pet, which actually may have some tax implications for us. After the lecture, we were free for the day. Miles and his dog took this opportunity for an afternoon nap. We had another quiet evening in and we are hoping for a quiet night tonight.