Brogan is an iDog

Awesome Mac trainer Nic is also darn good with Rottweilers.

The Apple Store in Los Gatos is a dog mecca and Brogan has been going with me for training appointments and hard drive melt down crises for nearly his whole life. Ironically for a town whose name means "The Cats" in Spanish, all of downtown is very dog friendly and on any given weekend the Mac store can look more like a coffeehouse/dog park combo than a retail store.

Today Brogan went along with me for a three hour long project appointment to work on a video for one of our longtime foster dogs at CARE, Birdie. Brogan is a real sweetheart about sitting very quietly under the tables you see in the background above. Most people who arrive after he has "Didn't even realize there's a dog under there" (I get that comment a lot). I now warn people, just in case they bend down and see a big fuzz face sitting near their loafers. We don't want any apoplexies in the Mac store. Especially not over my dog.

Everything was going swimmingly (Nic was a great instructor in addition to being very photogenic), but about an hour and a half in I looked down to see Brogan floating off towards another table. Oops! He's usually so good, but then I realized that normally our appointments are an hour and half, not today's three hours. His little internal clock was saying "Job over, time to go home". I called him back and put him on another down stay but it was a good reminder to me that I need to pay more attention to his needs: "bio" breaks, water breaks, a nice stretch. Three hours is a REALLY long time to hold a downstay!

When it was finally time to go, Brogan said goodbye to Nic and a couple of the other trainers like the celeb he is and had the biggest doggie grin I'd seen on his face since Emma left. It is really wonderful to see him such a kick out of his 'new' role!

Here's Birdie, the CARE dog whose "YouTube Promo Video"

I'm working on in iMovie. She's a wonderful 2 year old pittie mix

(about 45 lbs) who is looking for her forever home.

Brogan Starts His New Job

Brogan takes a breather in familiar surroundings

at the Palo Alto IKEA

My foster dog Emma (now Winnie) went happily to her new family this past Sunday, so Brogan's own new life as a Service Dog has begun in earnest. He has been helping me around the house and on hikes and walks for years, but it has only been in the last couple months that I realized that both he and I qualify for him to be a Service Dog in EVERY public location. Thanks to ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) laws in the US, Brogan doesn't really need any more special training, but just as I have always wanted him to be an excellent Rottweiler breed ambassador, I also want him to be an excellent service dog ambassador. And that means learning some extra skills and manners so that we can be the best team we can be.

Our first official outing was to IKEA on Monday. They have a very short escalator that I wanted to try him out on and I knew mid-day Monday would be nice and quiet. Brogan's eyes bugged out a bit at the sight of the evil monster escalator, but he trusted me to lead him onto it and safely off of it. Ok, there was a bit of scrambling of toenails on metal for the first (and second) attempt, but eventually we did better. Not perfect, but better.

The reward was the IKEA showroom itself, full of interesting 'houses' to explore and cushy carpets on which to rest Brogan's tired knee. The employees and other shoppers were great, giving Brogan lots of pets and encouragement. I'm still in the very early stages of learning how to handle the public's interest in Brogan. Many service dogs are 'hands off while working', but a mobility dog is a bit different in that his biggest responsibility is to stand near me (vs keeping me from stepping out into traffic for a seeing eye dog, for example). Brogan is so extremely social that a huge part of his motivation is attention from strangers and at this point I don't want to take that motivation away by asking him to ignore all other humans. As I said, it's a learning process for both of us.

Since our successful IKEA trip we've also been to OfficeMax and Target (really BIG escalators!). I love having him with me. In addition to knowing I won't end up on my posterior after crouching down to get something from a bottom shelf, it's wonderful simply to have him trotting along beside me with that big old Rottie grin on his face. Good boy!

Welcome to BabelHund

With Emma's New Life, the life and times of my foster dog blog, drawing to a close with the immanent adoption of Miss Emma (the small dog above) I thought it was time to launch a new endeavor: BabelHund.

Babel (as in "Tower of") references my love of languages, travel and the ensuing confusion and chaos. "Hund" is the German word for "dog". So BabelHund pretty much covers my favorite things!

BabelHund blog will follow my dog Brogan and I as we complete his mobility service dog certification and attempt to emmigrate from sunny California to dark and cold Germany. Fitting as I'm a German-Irish-Cherokee mutt with a very German name and Brogan is an American version of a German breed rescued from a shelter in Los Banos, California. How will we fare in our attempt to find a new life in the old country? Stay tuned!