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"Woof Woof" (translation: hello to you all)!! I am Naomi, a former Guide Dog puppy–in–training who was supposed to grow up and work as a guide dog for Guide Dogs of America... but… I flunked (gulp) and that was not a bad thing. Let me tell you a little about me. I was born November 21, 2006 into a litter of other pups whose names all begin with “N.” Yep, we were tiny, unskilled, awkward — and I’m told very, very cute.
At seven weeks we were all sent to different puppy-raiser volunteer humans who would socialize us, attend puppy kindergarten and take us to obedience classes. Some of the things we learned were: no sniffing, no tennis balls or Frisbee playing, heeling, sitting, and staying; more heeling, sitting and staying. There were lots of other more sophisticated maneuvers that we learned. This was all to prepare me to become a guide dog for a blind person.
After two years of the puppy training, I was to attend 6 months with professional trainers at Guide Dogs of America’s Sylmar, California location, to learn traffic lights, wear the special harness, cross streets, look for high branches to protect my blind person and other sophisticated things. However, I never got to that part — just the puppy-raising part was too stressful for me, Nancy was told. Some of us just don’t like working that hard since it can be unnatural for dogs and, in my case, the stress of it caused my skin to get flaky and very itchy. Believe me, I scratched a lot! So after 6 weeks of scrutiny and evaluation in January 2008, I was dropped from the program. At first, I was pretty sad and felt like a failure. But now, I’m very happy, except when we go to obedience classes every week. Nancy says she doesn’t want me to get too bratty so I still do the sit, heel, stay, stand stuff.
Oh, it wasn’t all work, by the way - Nancy and I had lots of fun. I got to go everywhere with her: restaurants, movies (boring because I couldn’t eat all the popcorn people dropped on the floor!); art museums (lots to smell there), business meetings and, my favorite… being with Nancy and her private clients in her office. Different people with wonderful smells of where they’d been, who’d been jumping on them… I could write a book on each client, but Nancy won’t let me. I still go to her office and also the group therapy sessions she runs. That is really fun when I can sneak up behind someone on the sofa and kiss them all over. But the beach is THE best place to be at any time.
Oh yes, I am a black Labrador Retriever, 70 pounds, and have quite a beautiful silky coat and face, according to all the people who meet me. The other canines around just know how much I like to play. We really don’t know what ‘beautiful’ means, to be honest with you. Well, Nancy is telling me I’m getting too long-winded here and that the word count is adding up.
Okay, I’m here because I will be a monthly guest speaker in the Forward Action E-zines. Well, of course, I won’t be speaking, just writing a little tidbit to you about how life is going for me. It’ll be great fun, which is what I mostly like to do – have fun and will love telling you about it. To the left are some shots of me doing what I do best… playing, being silly, sniffing and just being a black Lab! |
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