All Posts

Everyone young and old loves getting the therapy dog trading cards. When I went to the airport recently, the staff person who does our credentialing had all the dogs' cards on her bulletin board. When I was at our local hospital recently, I saw the Imaging Department, had a window full of therapy dog cards. I love the way Izzy's cards turned out. I decided to also make stickers to give out. From talking to people, adults love them to put on their water bottles and laptops and

For those of you wondering exactly what it took for Izzy and I to become a certified therapy dog team or if you are thinking about doing therapy with your dog, this post is for you. There are several national organizations that certify therapy dogs and each has a little different procedure. Izzy and I are certified with Alliance of Therapy Dogs so that is what I will cover in this post. With Alliance of Therapy Dogs (ATD) the first step is a handling assessment: A certified T

Our Pack People typically think of dogs playing when you mention socialization but it is so much more than that. Izzy walks several times a week with her friend, Maeve and once a week in a pack walk with Maeve and Elisha. Our pack walks teach our dogs to walk on a loose leash, stay calm around other dogs, and enjoy the outdoors with confidence. These walks combine exercise, mental enrichment, and social skills in a way that’s safer and more controlled than unstructured play,

Using the Capture technique for Peek-a-boo. We are in the Tricks level 2 class now. Teaching tricks is a great enrichment activity as well as a great way to continue to stregthen your working bond. It is also great for enhancing what we do on therapy visits. At the hospital, large dogs are not allowed on patient beds or to put their paws on the beds. It makes it really difficult for patients to interact with the dogs. I'm training Izzy to put her front paws on a step stool so

Officially a Therapy Dog We did it! Izzy's application passed and she is a Therapy Dog. We will have her ID tag soon. That gets mailed. I am so excited for us to get started. I think the time it has taken, has been good. Izzy has just continued to make progress and I feel like we have reached a new level in our communication and ability to work together. We are definitely ready. I have been going through the process to volunteer at the Eugene Airport. I've completed the backg

I heard from Alliance of Therapy Dogs. Our application is being processed. We are almost official! They asked for our registration fee and I paid it within 30 seconds lol! Can't wait to start working with Izzy!

Happy Dog We went camping last week to the same place we took Izzy for her first camping trip last year. What a difference! We were able to take her on long hikes and she had a blast and my arms are still in their sockets. Last year she was too young to walk very far and also did not know how to walk on a leash. This year she was fun to walk. She amazed me when we came to a steep downhill stretch. I have a bad knee and hate going downhill especially with lots of scree. While

Our Pack We are keeping busy as we wait for our paperwork to go through Alliance of Therapy Dogs. Izzy has two friends that she plays with now: Juno and Maya but socialization is so much more than play. She has a pack walk once a week with Maeve and Elisha and we usually get another walk in with Maeve. They learn so much on these walks. For Izzy, she learns that we don't always play with other dogs and while she can interact from a distance, it's not a time for physical inter

I think this would be Izzy's response if she knew what I did. So I submitted my application to Alliance of Therapy Dogs (ATD) an hour after my last observed visit. I checked and double-checked my packet and then scanned it. I looked at it before attaching and then emailed it. I knew due to staff turnover and an increase in applicants as another major certifying agency has folded, it would be 5 to 7 weeks. I have been patiently waiting. Today I got an email from ATD. I was so

It's been busy here. I am so behind in posts so this one will cover a lot :) The biggest news is that Izzy passed all 3 of her observed visits and I have submitted her application to Alliance of Therapy Dogs (ATD)! They have gone through a lot of staff changes and are playing catch up so I'm trying to be patient as we wait (could be 5 to 7 weeks). Izzy made two new friends in the last month. Sam is looking for a home and is with Golden Bond Retriever Rescue. His foster sister

There are some commands that the importance of your dog knowing them is obvious. A strong recall comes to mind. Yesterday, I had a real life situation that demonstrates the importance of the "Wait" command. For Izzy, wait means to stay where she is when I say wait until I release her. It was a beautiful, cool morning. Izzy had her second observed visit later that morning and I decided to get her out for an early morning walk. As we started out at our usual walking spot, I was

Today's post has nothing about Izzy or Therapy Dogs but it is about a cat who was an unofficial therapy cat. This is long (but not near as long as it could be). I think it is worth a read though. I got a call today from my brother’s ex-girlfriend (who I really had hoped would be my sister-in-law, but it didn’t work out). She let me know that Smokey, a little cat she had given a home to after my brother, Dar, died, was critically ill and she had an appointment to have her euth

Afternoon pool time. This will be a short post as I'm exhausted. Dave left on the weekend for a wildfire conflagration. He is over in Central Oregon protecting people's houses from the Rowe Creek Complex Fire. So, Izzy and I are on our own. There's a lot to do with Izzy, the cats and our property, especially in the Summer, with two people. With just me, I feel like I am busy from sunup to sundown. Izzy is getting more time on her own. While she'd prefer to be with me, she is

Not the best photo but the best I could do holding her leash and trying to be quiet. Izzy did great on her first official therapy visit! We met Tanja, who is a tester/observer for Alliance of Therapy Dogs and a member of FETCH Therapy Dogs, and her dog Rocco in the front lobby. I could tell Izzy wondered why she and Rocco weren't going to play but she got past that fairly quickly. We took the dogs to two nurses' stations and into several patient rooms. She also got to meet a

Had to get some action shots of Izzy at the beach. She was so excited and rarely stopped moving.

Had so much fun photographing Izzy at the coast. This first set are stills taken at morning golden light. The light was just perfect. Izzy letting us know it was early for all the photographs. We got more sun as we got to the beach. The beach is definitely this girl's happy place!

Izzy's new favorite place. We just got back from a 5-day camping trip at Harbor Vista in Florence. We all had an amazing time and Izzy found her happy place. We weren't in a site that would work with Izzy's x-pen, so we used her overhead pully. She adjusted quickly. She learned what fire was and respected it. The only problem was that she thought her job was to prune and excavate the site. We ended up using her x-pen to block the places she wanted to prune. By day 3, she had

We did it!! We had our Therapy Dog Certification Handling Assessment this morning. I was so nervous but tried not to send that energy down the leash. I think I have just been working so hard towards this and am so eager to start therapy work again, I got myself worked up. Even if she hadn't passed, she would have had 2 more tries. We did it though! Neither of us was perfect but it's not so much about perfection as being able to work together as a team. She wanted to play with

Izzy decided this week she didn't want to get into the van to go on her play adventure with Lucky Dog. This was something they had to work on with her when she started and they got her past it. She decided this week, she wasn't comfortable getting in the crate again. We tried Tuesday and Friday so we've decided to give her a couple of weeks off and see if that helps. With that change, it was great to have our new mini pack walk and a play date with Juno this week, to give Izz

Mini pack walk with Erin and Maeve and Wendy and Elisha. It's been a busy week and we have exciting news! Izzy is scheduled for her Therapy Dog Certification Test on July 19! I really didn't think we would be testing when she was this young, but I think she is ready. We can retake it and it will give us good feedback so it will be helpful even if she doesn't pass. I am nervous though! The timing is really something and makes me think Emmi is guiding us. We are doing the test