Today started off in Barb’s room. We ate some delicious bagels and cream cheese with strawberries and clementines that Barb and Judy provided us. There were only plain and multigrain because we forgot to ask about food allergies, but it was all good.
As we waited for the bus to arrive, we watched a video about dog psychology. The video contained different methods that dogs use to communicate to one another and to us. We were told to keep our eyes peeled for these behaviors when we were in the dog parks.
Once on the bus, we headed to the first dog park, Timber Creek. We braved the snow which had been falling steadily for about 2 hours at that point and made our way through the park. We encountered several dogs including a Sheltie (pictured above) named Skylar. He was a little overwhelmed by our large group, but he still let us pet him. We said our goodbyes and got back on the bus to go to our next dog park, Freedom Bark.
Freedom Bark provided us with several dogs, none of which we got close enough to to pet. We hiked through mud, over bridges, through fields, up a hill, by a playground, and almost completed a dog agility course. It was by far the best dog park. As we were leaving, we encountered Roxy, the husky pictured above. Roxy was a lower school reading companion who would sit with elementary school-aged kids whilst they read. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye and get on the bus to go to RITAS!
RITAS WAS CLOSED. ALL WE WANTED WAS SOME FREE WATER ICE BUT THEY WEREN’T OPEN YET. SO WE HAD TO LEAVE.
Disheartened from that ordeal, we went to our last dog park of the day … if you could call it a dog “park.” It was horrible. It was a 20X20 ft. SQUARE OF NOTHING. We looked at it for about 2 seconds and ran for our lives to the bus to escape the blizzard. We tried a different Rita’s which was open! We got our free water ice, and we thanked our really cool bus driver and our really cool teacher duo for letting us detour.
After we arrived back at school we surprised Spencer with cake for his birthday. After we ate the cake we set up the room for the Service Dog Trainers. They brought with them a lovely German Shepherd named Seneca. They also had a service dog/handler combo with them. The service dog was named Nona and Handler’s name was Jimmy. He was an Air Force veteran who did 2 tours in Iraq defusing bombs. We learned all about what it takes to train dogs to become service dogs. It was very educational and we were grateful for them coming to our school and bringing their dogs with them.
Today was a great start to our Intensive Learning and we are excited to pet more dogs!