Settling In

Greetings. Well, I made it to The Seeing eye fine. no real trouble, despite my record of always having something happen to me whenever I travel through airports. Anyway, wanted to write a quick note and say that I'm settling in quite nicely. It's been weird walking around here and having all the memories of the time before come back, along with adjusting to changes that have been made in different places to the structure or the equipment that's used. We had a meeting tonight with everyone and we all got our leashes, some grooming equipment, the tie down cahin (to chain to the bed post or built-in eyelet in the wall, to keep the dogs from wandering off; we will use the same tie down methods when we go home), and a mat that we can now take home with us. The mat is different from the first time I was here. Anyway, lots of neat stuff. We get to sleep in tomorrow, with a 7am wake up call and 8:00 breakfast. I say sleep in because when we get the dogs, our wake up call will then move to 5:30 for feeding and taking the dogs out to "park," or make their regular deposits.

There are between 20-24 students and staff here. There are 5 instructors and the rest are students, including me. Lots of replacement dog people here, or as they also call them retrains or retreds. Several here for their second dogs, and some for the third, forth, fifth, even one person for their sixth. There are also a good number of first time people here as well. I joked with one of them earlier saying, "your dog will never throw up," to which we all laughed.

I find it interesting when i tell people how long its been since I've worked a dog, being 9 years, and then they say something like, "Wow, and I thought my time was long at one or two months." There's also the usual comments that go something like, "I love dogs; I could never go back to a cane." Now I'm seeing both sides here, of those that love dogs so much that they don't consider themselves cane users, and those that are more balanced, even though they still might love dogs, but who also accept and use the cane when needed. I used to fall in the first camp, when I thought that the dog was the answer to everry problem, but I've gradually moved into the second, seeing a more balance between the two.

One other thing, since all the rooms have Sirius Satellite radios, as time goes on, many people are leavign their radios on when they're not in the rooms. So its interesting to walk down the hall and hear the range of music coming out, as well as the different personalities and tastes of the students and staff.

Until tomorrow, which promises to be a great day, not the least of which is because I'll have more of a full night's rest. Night.