I am writing this post from my own couch, with two dogs asleep at my feet and a cup of tea on the table beside me. I have been home from Seeing Eye for a little more than a week, and while at times it’s been a bit of a bumpy transition back to reality, I’m very glad to be sleeping in my own bed and cooking my own food and of course snuggling with my Neutron Star again.
I could probably write a whole post on what it’s been like coming home, and maybe I will, but for now, I want to talk about my final week of training at Seeing Eye, before I forget all the details.
Last time I posted, I wrote about our trip to New York City on Friday. After that, we had all day Saturday off. I used the time to play with Frolic, and of course groom her and practice obedience, where I give Frolic a bunch of basic commands to strengthen her training and our bond. I also got to attend my biweekly writing group, which meets virtually, which was a bonus I hadn’t been expecting. And I hung out with some of my new friends in the common lounge. On Saturday evening, the retrain students, those of us at the Seeing Eye for a successor dog, had the going home lecture, where we talked about transitioning back to our real lives and how to keep up our training with our new dogs. It will take six months to a year for us to really gel as a team, so in a lot of ways we are still training. We are always training, really.
Sunday was kind of a magical day!
In the morning, I went into town with my instructor, and we practiced some clicker training, having Frolic target a trash can in the park so she would take me right to it with one command. Then we went to the statue of Morris Frank and Buddy, the Seeing Eye’s founder with the first Seeing Eye dog, and took the customary picture together. Someone who calls themselves the Morristown Fiber Fairy had left a number of hats, scarves, and gloves on the statue for people in need to take, which was really nice.
When we got back, I met up with some classmates, and we decided to walk around the leisure path on campus together. A big snow storm was supposed to be coming in the afternoon, and on Monday it was supposed to get bitterly cold, so we felt like it would be our last chance to walk on the leisure path with our dogs. I went out with one classmate, my partner from the Elm Street route and the New York trip, and we had a great time walking the paths, our dogs kind of racing each other, trying to take selfies in the gazebos. It was cold, but not terribly cold, and when I got back inside, I actually decided to join another group of classmates to do it again.
In the afternoon, my small class met up and we got our dogs’ puppy profiles. Frolic grew up in a family with a mother, a father, a couple college students, and one high school student. The high school student was her main caretaker. I found out all the places Frolic visited as a puppy, including that she went to some high school classes with the mother, who was a teacher. This made me happy, because I have to admit I was feeling a certain way about Frolic being my first dog not to attend school with me (the sort of way has to do with being a real adult no longer in school and nothing to do with feeling like my dogs need an education). Frolic’s puppy raisers also said that when she had to go out, Frolic would ring a bell hanging from the doorknob, so I got bells for my front and back doors and I’m retraining her to use them with me (she was in the kennels at Seeing Eye for several months before she came home with me so she’s picking it up but still a work in progress). Finally, Frolic’s puppy raisers talked about the kind of toys she likes. She loves bones, which I had definitely noticed. She isn’t a huge fan of balls—she mostly just wants to play with her humans—which I’d also noticed. They did say that she loves stuffed toys and doesn’t destroy them, which I’m glad about, because so does Neutron. And they even sent me the toy stuffed pig, which they’d named Gilbert, and which was Frolic’s favorite toy as a puppy. When I gave it to her, Frolic just rolled around on the floor with it in her mouth in absolute delight. I’ve never gotten anything more than the basic info in my puppy profiles—no toys, no pictures—so this felt really meaningful. And Frolic was so happy about it!
After getting our puppy profiles, we got to play in the Seeing Eye’s outdoor free run. As Frolic’s puppy profile said, she wasn’t super interested in the giant toys they had out there, but she was interested in running around the free run at top speed and then running back to me and flinging herself bodily at me. We practiced the “here” command for off leash recall. I don’t have a good place for her to be off leash outside, and since I can’t see her anyway that’s never a good idea anyway, and for the same reasons dog parks are a big no-no, but it’s still a really useful command to work on. She was very good, and very enthusiastic about it.
The snow was really starting to come down by this point. I went to the common lounge and messed around a little bit on the piano, trying to see how Frolic would react to me playing music. She flopped onto the pedal, so obviously she was hoping to contribute.
By late afternoon, a bunch of us were feeling a little stir crazy, so we decided to try the leisure path again. We didn’t get very far, because the snow was coming down so much that none of us, human or dog, could even find the path. But we did get to play with our puppies in the snow, and Frolic got an incredible case of the sillies.
Things only got sillier at park time. Trying to get eighteen dogs to relieve themselves in a blizzard when they just want to jump around catching snowflakes was an experience.
On Sunday night, we ordered pizza and hung out in the common lounge, playing with our pups and singing along with our classmate who played guitar, which had become a near nightly tradition at this point. My small class also went downstairs to the gym area, where Seeing Eye had two rows of actual airline chairs for us to practice maneuvering our dogs under the seats in front of us. Frolic, being the smallest of the dogs I’ve had so far, fit beautifully, and at this point I think she was just sorry that our flight on Seeing Eye airlines couldn’t last longer, because she was ready for a good snooze.
The last three days were spent on more freelance work. We mostly stayed inside, because it was something like 3 degrees, with a windchill of -7 or something. Let’s be real, none of us go outside in those conditions unless we absolutely have to anyway, and while taking our dogs outside for park time is definitel an absolutely have to, it was not fun.
So on Monday, we went to Walmart and practiced navigating store aisles some more, along with some more work on the “follow” command, which is something we teach our dogs so they can follow people we’re with. It’s a really useful command, but you also have to be careful that you’re not always following the same person, or your dog will start to think that they’re in charge, not you.
On Monday afternoon, I also went to a pet store, where I got Frolic a tag for her collar, resisted my instructor’s attempts to get me to buy a fish or a hampster, and navigated around all the distractions in the store—the dog food, the toys, the squeaking animals, the dog that I kid you not leapt off the counter to bark at us as we attempted to leave the store.
On Tuesday morning, we went to a big indoor plaza type place in Morristown that was a bunch of interconnected buildings. We practiced using revolving doors, and I think I finally have it, actually. Go through backward! I did not traumatize Frolic, even though I did bump her a little bit with the door. She’s made of pretty tough stuff, this girl. I probably won’t aim to go through revolving doors if I have a choice still, but now I feel a lot more confident about navigating them than I did before. Third dog is the charm I guess.
We also navigated through some indoor construction and then practiced more clicker training, this time having Frolic target a specific credit card scanner on the counter at the movie theater. She took me to the same one every time, even though there were several along the counter. We worked on this specifically because I was asking about teaching her to target a specific badge swipe when I get off the elevators at work, in an area where there are multiple badge swipes that lead to different parts of the building and it’s easy to get a little turned around. We even tried having her target the cash register coming from different directions, and she was fabulous at that too!y
On Tuesday afternoon we worked through the courthouse in Morristown, which has a metal detector so we could practice going through a TSA-like situation, or a whole host of other situations in D.C. honestly. The courthouse also has lots of twisty turny hallways, with lots of short flights of stairs in random places. It was a good place to practice following our dogs in tight quarters with surprise obstacles. We also did some more practice on elevators there. After the courthouse, I had an appointment with the vet to get Frolic’s medical history and records, and I met with the head of admissions and graduate services to check out and pay for my dog and equipment and get my Seeing Eye ID and everything. Frolic is now officially mine!
A quick note for those who don’t know: first-time students at the Seeing Eye pay $150 for their dogs. Returning students pay $50. Veterans pay only $1. We get the dog’s harness and grooming equipment for free, and we can buy other equipment at cost from the school. The Seeing Eye is run largely on donations, but they believe that we should pay at least a nominal fee for our dogs so that we own them. This is different from how most other schools operate, and it’s one of the reasons I chose the Seeing Eye in the first place. I like the fact that they trust me with full ownership of my dog, that all decisions about my dog’s food and health and how much they work and when they retire are mine, and that they will never come and take my dog away from me for any reason.
On Wednesday, I needed to start to pack. Frolic was a bit nervous about this, especially when I packed up all her toys. In between packing, we still had two more trips to do.
On Wednesday morning, we went to the hospital and worked a route through the twisty halls, which were full of people and obstacles to navigate around. Frolic was a pro, and it was a good exercise for me not to let my stress travel down the handle to her. I don’t like hospitals.
On Wednesday afternoon, our whole small class went to the mall. We worked up and down escalators; up and down those little flights of stairs that malls so often seem to have in the middle of everything; around the food court; through the kids’ play area; through a store, where Frolic did run me into a watch stand because she thought going under it was the correct way, oops; and past a dog and a human, both of whom felt the need to bark at us. Besides the minor collision with the watches, it was a really good last trip in training, and it was also nice to hang out for a bit with our whole small class back together again one more time.
On Wednesday night I finished packing and then hung out in the common lounge for one more cup of hot cocoa and one more singalong. Then Thursday morning we were doublechecking my room for anything I might have forgotten, and I was getting on a train back to D.C. and my real life, now with Frolic at my side.s
Thank you all for coming on this adventure of my training with Frolic at Seeing Eye. It was very different from my previous classes, because it felt like so much more of a roller coaster. It still feels like a roller coaster at home, but Frolic and Neutron are becoming fast friends, and I’m glad to be home, even though I miss all the friends I made in New Jersey. I’m loving having two dogs in my house, and my own bed and shower are still making me very happy.
Welcome home Frolic!