Wow!
A friend of mine called me today to tell me that Widget is on the front page of today’s newspaper. Being myself as I always am, I grabbed my keys, and slippers and raced down all the stairs of my apartment into the lobby to check this paper out. Turns out she’s right! This dynamite dog hit the front page news! It’s exciting! You can see for yourself if/when you click the picture below!
Chow for Now!
I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks, and I apologize for that. I have been under the whether emotionally and physically, and the new bus system is wearing me down. I do have my new glasses and I LOVE them! Widget has intestinal problems again (nothing serious, but a chronic issue) So I haven’t been out with him much.
I will be blogging at some point about when I’ll be getting him full time when I’m feeling better, but for now, here is a link and photo about service dog etiquette and how to be respectful. I think the pic is self explanatory, however, if you want to know more you can click on the picture and it will take you to a page which will help you understand the dos and donts when you see a service dog.
As for me, if my dog is working and you distract him, you could potentially cause me to go into an anxiety attack that could take me weeks to recover from. My service dog is trained specifically to understand when my emotional stability is unstable and when I need to leave or change what I am doing. If you distract him in any way – you are taking his mind off of his work and potentially putting me in harms way.
Now, what if you did that with someone that has a dog for medical alert like low or high blood sugar? Or someone with epilepsy? You could potentially be harming the handler and sending them to the hospital because their dog was distracted.
Yes service dogs are trained to ignore distractions, but if you call their name or get up in their face or pet them you are going to distract them from working.
If you already know the dos and donts with service dogs thank you so much for respecting us and our dogs.
If you didn’t realize it was an issue and you are now going to improve yourself in this area, thank you very much for understanding and changing your ways.
If you are just some ignorant person and you don’t care and just want to pet the cute dog, well just remember this – in some states it’s a felony to distract a service dog from working. And would you want to end up in the hospital or dead because of some ignorant person that is distracting you and your medical aid?
Chow for Now
