Sunday, May 30, 2010

on a quest

This morning didn’t really start out all that great. I’m starting to learn that Bogart is not a morning person. (well there is something we have in common) We sort of slept in yesterday and when I got up to take him out he was still lying on his bed and making no move to get up. So I popped into the shower and when I came out he was still lying in his bed. Got to like his attitude he? Anyway, I roused my lazy dog and took him for relief which went fine. Then I popped into get my breakfast but about half way through he started having the heaves and threw up a bit o file. Leah asked if he had eaten and I said no that he had slept in. she found that pretty funny. Anyway, she suggested I try to take him up and see if he will eat anything. I did and the answer was no. I find it hard to get him to eat in the morning so maybe he’ll end up getting fed at work instead when I get back.

I let him rest for a bit while we had our morning 9am meeting. They told us that we were doing quests today. We would be groups of 2 or 3 and they would give us a place we had to find. In order to find it we had to ask people on the street if they knew where it was. I hate these sorts of games and probably was a bit whiney.  Leah was laughing because I had pulled out my gps and she thought I was typing in the name of the place. Hah, she has obviously never seen me try to use my gps and how long it takes me to type in a search string. I was, however, making sure that street announcements was on. I was g going to try to change it so that POI’s would be turned on as well but I couldn’t remember the command in the ten seconds I had to do so. POI’s are Points of Interest which are things like stores, cafes, tourist attractions etc. I usually have this turned off because it gives too much information if I’m just needing street names. I use Mobile Geo and have it set up to tell me the next intersection. With a couple of quick taps to the screen I can find out what street I’m on, the next intersection or the closest POI’s.

I was with Katjyia and we were asked to find The roasting Apple. Sounds good but actually it’s a house ware store according to Courtney. Yippee, I get to ask people where the roasting apple is. We knew we had to get downtown so we took the first way we were taught which was Rebecca to Ker to lakeshore. As we were crossing Rebecca at Kerr we heard our teachers yell something. Both Katjyia and I were totally confused. In retrospect we should have just continued crossing and waited for them on the other side. However, being nervous students, we did an around command and took our dogs back to the curb.

It turned out that there was a woman in the bushes who had fallen over while she was taking a pee and her friend was yelling for help. These were two elderly women who might have had some other mental health issues going on. Apparently when the woman was helped up by Leah the whole world got a view of her privates. She didn’t seem embarrassed at all while she pulled up her underwear and pans. Her friend was telling her she should get some of those adult diapers since they are great and then things like this wouldn’t happen.

Okay, well that was interesting. Off we go again. The first people we encounter are some guys on a bench in front of Tim Horton’s. the guy says he doesn’t know where it is but he thinks it is on this side of the road further downtown. We continue …

I hear a man walking towards me. Well, I think it is a man because of the jingling change in his pocket. I stop him to ask for directions and surprise surprise, it’s Katy from our class with Byron, Bogart’s brother. Katy has weakness in her left hand so Byron has been specially trained to walk on her right. This is why I didn’t notice the dog. Regardless she wasn’t very helpful, although giggling a lot so off we went again.

Katjyia hit the jackpot by asking a woman where this store was when we were at Navy and lakeshore. I over heard the directions and they sounded very good. Off we went. It sounds like this store is at the end of downtown, beside lu lu lemons. Bogart sort of walked me over to a bench were people were sitting. I corrected him, telling to be careful but then took advantage of the situation to ask these people if they knew where the store was. Basically got the same directions as before so we knew we were on the right path.

Once we crossed Trafalgar we had to pay more attention. The next person we asked said it was 3 doors behind us. We turned around and walked about three doors back. I was then engaged in conversation about poodles as guide dogs. Before these people left I asked them what the store was behind me and, yes, it was the one we needed to find. Success at last!

We then walked the quickest way to the school I could think of. Bogart still wasn’t feeling well. He was guiding me around everything pretty well but he sometimes would stop and take a bit to make his decision, especially if we were in the shade.  he was also walking very slowly.

Once we got back I took him upstairs and got him some water. I let him lie about in the air conditioned room until lunch was over. Then Katjyia, Katy and myself were driven downtown and dropped off and told to go back to the school. This was sort of a dry run of our solo walks that we will be doing on Wednesday. Then they will drop us out of the van but not tell us where we are. We are to ask people and then get ourselves back to the school. For us who use gps’s we are allowed to use them because we will be using them in our home environment. Besides, as Courtney said, it actually adds another layer of complication to our walk since we’ll have to be listening to the gps and paying attention to our dogs and our walk all at the same time.

We had no problems walking back and Katy made it the whole way under the bribe of a cheeseburger from her mom. I was disappointed because I didn’t get a cheeseburger! The only issue we had was our dogs feet were getting hot when we were standing around waiting for the other too go. Bogart did a couple of weird things but really he only walked me into two people and one there was really no where to go between the person and the bus shelter. He is also smart enough to to see the van even when it is behind us. At one point he went over to the curb just thinking that any car would do. I knew what he was doing but let him continue to see if he would navigate around the trees


In the night Alex gave us a talk on our rights and what would be in our graduation pack. The most important piece of information for me was that transportation carriers must provide a seat for the dog as long as they have appropriate notice. That will be very helpful when flying. We’ll see how it goes on my first flight on Friday.

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