Salisbury does this pretty cool thing called Salisbury Seminar Day. One Saturday a year (although I'd love to have it twice a year!) the boys don't have to go to their Saturday classes (yes in case you didn't know the boys have regular Saturday classes) instead the faculty volunteer to teach a variety of seminars about different life skills. It could be anything from learning how to iron a shirt, bake bread or drive a stick shift to something like "Iron Chef Salisbury" (that's what Tarra and I did last year). This year I had asked Fidelco if someone would be able to come out with a trained seeing-eye dog and give a seminar.
Jan Adams from Fidelco was nice enough to make the hour plus drive to the Hilltop and bring with her Yuki a two year old almost graduated seeing-eye dog. Jan explained to the boys everything that happens with Fidelco dogs from the moment they are born all the way up to when they retire. It was great for everyone to hear how the fosters (that's us) fit into everything and how important our job is.
Everyone was able to ask questions, like what happens if the dog doesn't make it as a seeing-eye dog
(answer...sometimes the dogs will have career changes like going to work with the CT Police Department and become a search and rescue dog, a bomb or drug dog or sometimes the foster family is asked if they would like to make the dog a family pet. Either way there is a long line of people who would be happy to take a Fidelco dog) other questions were mostly about the training process and the things a trained dog could do, like read traffic, judge how tall a person was and be able to make decisions to keep the handler safe.
Jan told us a story about a dog named Nemo...this particular dog had needed some additional training as sometimes it wasn't the best listener, but his handler loved him and he did work really hard most of the time so they were a great match and worked well with each other. Anyway one day (after a big storm) the handler went out for a walk and had to cross two sets of streets. The pair had walked this route before and was very familiar with everything.
However after they crossed the first street Nemo stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and refused to go forward. No mater what the handler tried Nemo would not move forward. Now it would have been easy for the handler to have just walked forward, but she remembered something her Fidelco trainer had told her...there will come a time although you may not know what your dog is doing or why, you're going to have to trust your dog. So after asking Nemo to go forward without any luck the handler finally gave another command..find the way.
Nemo immediately made a right turn and lead the woman into the street. Once in the street they made a left turn and started to walk in the street very close to the sidewalk. Then finally Nemo made another left turn and lead the women up onto the sidewalk. They then crossed the second street like normal until they reached the other side. A man came rushing up the women asking if she was OK, the women replied yes I'm fine. The man went on your dog...your dog is amazing! The women was confused she had no idea why Nemo was not listening and why he took her into the street.
The man replied that there was a live telephone wire hanging at neck level. Nemo had recognized the danger and refused to continue forward on the dangerous path and instead lead the woman around the danger. Talk about incredible....for a dog to gauge how tall a person is and refuse a command that would put his person in danger...incredible. Nemo won Fidelco dog of the year btw.
Hopefully when Tripper grows up he can proudly wear a Fidelco harness and do for someone what Nemo did or what any of the other Fidelco dogs.
