Are You Talking to Me?

Next time this happens, I think I'm just going to ask: Are you talking to me?  Or are you talking to my dog?

It's happened a few times.  The first time went something like this.

Isaac and I were walking through Kroger.  I saw an employee heading in our direction.  She nodded at other customers in greeting as she passed them.

As she approached me and my service dog, though, she broke into a huge smile and said, in a loud, high-pitched voice, "Hello!  And how are you today?"

I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or to Isaac.  She seemed to be looking at us both.  It's not uncommon for people to greet Isaac and not me or to otherwise speak to him and not me.  I don't mind that, usually.  Sometimes I just ignore them, other times I answer for Isaac.  If they say, "How are you today?" to Isaac, I might say, "He's fine" or "He says he's great."  It just depends on my mood, I guess, and what I'm doing at the time.

But this time I couldn't tell.  She was using the tone of voice people often use when talking to dogs.  If she was talking to me that way, it must be because she thought I was intellectually disabled since I had a service dog.

I was not prepared for this situation.  I wasn't sure what to do.

I ended up responding, just as loud, in the same tone of voice, "I'm fine, how are you?"

Which I think was a perfectly suitable response.

But I really am curious about whether she was actually talking to me or to my dog.  So next time, I think I'm just gonna ask.

Listening with Doggie Ears

Today was our regular day volunteering at the nursing home.

And here's a picture of Isaac dressed for work in his new bandana.  Cute, isn't he?

Today while at the nursing home, and afterward, I was thinking about the issue of consent and how Isaac and I communicate with the nursing home residents, particularly those that aren't able to communicate real clearly verbally.

One thing I always try to do is to get a resident's consent before bringing Isaac into their room or before bringing him real close to them, before letting him sniff them, before letting him kiss them, before letting him put his paws up on the arm of their chair or on their bed, before letting him jump up on their bed, and so on.  While many of the residents love him, I know not everyone likes dogs (Isaac does not know that, though, so shhh!  Don't tell him).  Some people are afraid of dogs.  Some are happy to pet a dog but don't want to be licked by a dog.  Some of the residents like dogs but sometimes they may not feel well or may be tired or in pain or may be busy doing something else and just not want to pet him at that very moment.

Plus, it's just part of being respectful.  I don't think nursing home residents generally get  a lot of privacy, they often have people intruding in their personal space (which may be necessary if they need a lot of help with personal hygiene and stuff, but it's still an intrusion in some sense, I think), they don't get to make a lot of choices or exercise a lot of control over their environment, and I want their experience with Isaac, and with me, to be different from all of that.

So if someone is in the dining room, I stop a short distance from them and ask "Do you want to pet the dog?"  If someone is in their room, I knock on the door (even if it's open) and ask if they want to pet the dog.  There are some people that I know always want to pet the dog, but I still knock before entering their rooms or greet them from a short distance away and make sure they want a visit from Isaac today.  With some of those people, I don't really have to ask if they want to pet Isaac because as soon as they see us coming, they call out to him or beckon him over to them.  But in general, I ask.  And if I think they could reach him better if he put his paws up on the arm of their chair, I ask if it's OK for him to do that.  And so on.

But how do you get consent if someone doesn't speak?  Or doesn't make sense when they speak?

I've realized that Isaac has gotten better at reading signals from people.  He is still certain everyone loves him and wants to be his bestest friend, but he no longer seems to believe they all want to be kissed on the lips by him.

Dogs rely a lot on body language, though, and tone of voice.  Isaac listens to those things more than to the words someone says.  When we still lived with Mike, Mike would tell him to lie down or leave something alone, but Isaac wouldn't do what Mike told him to do.  Mike didn't know why.  I knew why, though, and I tried to explain it to Mike.  The problem was that Mike said "leave it" in the same tone of voice you would say "come on, let's play!"  Mike said "down" in the same tone of voice you would use to say "good doggie, I want to pet you!"  Isaac responded to the tone of voice, not to  his words.

I've found that if I listen with doggie ears, or pay attention to things like tone of voice and body language, I can get a pretty good idea of what people are saying or trying to say.  I can tell if they want Isaac to come closer or if they don't want him to come closer.  I can tell if they are happy he is near them or if they would maybe prefer to be left alone.

I may not be perfect at interpreting these things.  But it seems to be working pretty well so far.

Animals in My Underpants

An acquaintance of mine told me she was browsing my Etsy shop and she thought I should make more cloth menstrual pads from batik print fabric.  Currently I have a couple of those listed but I also have a lot of animal prints, mostly various kitty cats, but also some whales and dolphins.  She told me she felt weird about having animals in her underpants.

That cracked me up.  I never thought about it.  But then I wondered if others feel the same way.

Anyway, I love batik fabric.  So Isaac and I took a trip to the fabric store.

He is very patient while I'm picking out fabric but he thought the woman cutting the fabric for me was taking far too long, so he decided to lie down and wait.

And here is some of the beautiful batik fabric I bought.

I don't have anything made from them in my Etsy shop yet, of course.  I hope to soon.  And if you find anything you like, remember to use the coupon code "BLOGREADER" to get 10% of whatever you buy!

How Did My Dental Surgery Go?

Ugh.  And ouch.  I think that about sums it up.

But if you want to know more, well, first of all, I was exhausted on Wednesday because Monday night Cayenne kept me up a good bit of the night puking and then Tuesday night I was too anxious about the surgery to sleep well.  So I was exhausted.

I did not take Isaac with me, for two reasons. 

One, it's my understanding that medical people generally don't want a dog in the room when they are doing surgery because they want things to be as clean and sterile as possible.  Now, this was dental surgery and it was done in the same room I had my exam the previous week, not in an operating room, but still, the dentist and the assistant wore masks and gloves and you can't put a mask on a dog.  It is allowable under the Americans with Disabilities Act to exclude service dogs for this reason.  However, as soon as I got there the assistant asked me where my dog was and assured me it would have been no problem having him there.  Well, now I know for next time.

But the other reason I didn't take him was because it's hard to talk and give commands to a dog when someone is performing surgery inside your mouth.  I did not feel comfortable trusting Isaac to hold a down stay for an hour without needing to maybe tell him at some point to lie back down.  And I didn't trust myself to be able to pay enough attention to him, either, to even notice when he was starting to get up or something.  I knew I would be very focused on what was happening in my mouth and on dissociating from what was happening in my mouth, and as smart as Isaac is, he is also aware of when I'm not paying attention to him and is not above trying to sneak in a sniff of something he's not supposed to sniff or sneakily soliciting a pet from somebody.  I definitely did not want my dog distracting my dentist while he was operating on my mouth!

So I didn't take him.  I did take my weighted blanket.  I always feel sort of weird settling into the dental chair with my blankie, but you know, whatever it takes to get through it.  I explained to the assistant what it was and how it was supposed to help with anxiety.  She was not familiar with weighted blankets but said she liked the idea.  She said she likes to be under very heavy blankets. 

The actually surgery itself was not bad.  It took less than an hour and he gave me tons of novacaine.  I did not feel a thing.

Unfortunately, the tons of novacaine began to wear off when I was almost home and by the time I got inside my apartment, I was in tears.  As I'd feared, the aftermath was worse than the actual surgery.  The pain was really bad.  A lot worse than my dental surgery last fall.  However, unlike the surgery last fall, it didn't trigger flashback of having my arms stapled.  The severe pain did cause a lot of anxiety, though.  Panic, really, I would say.  I cried a lot.  I wanted to sleep but was in too much pain.  I also felt feverish, although I took my temperature and it was actually slightly below normal.  But I was freezing cold; it was 78 degrees in my apartment and I was only warm enough when I was under two blankets. 

Fortunately, I felt a lot better by the next day.  Now, three days later, the pain is pretty minimal most of the time as long as I don't try to eat.  At times it starts to ache a lot but Tylenol is sufficient to reduce that pain.  But eating... I am starving.  I've been living on protein shakes, mostly.  I had some tomato soup yesterday and today I had broccoli cheddar soup from Panera, although I didn't eat much of the actual chunks of broccoli.  I can eat yogurt but honestly, I lot some crunchy stuff in my yogurt, but that hurts too much to eat right now.  I also really like chia seeds in my yogurt, but those tend to get stuck in my teeth, and there is no way I could floss right now.  Today I baked some diced apples with Splenda, cinnamon and nutmeg, and I cooked them until they were really, really soft, and that was yummy.  But I'm still hungry and wish I could eat actual food.

I've been napping a lot the past few days.  Recovering, I guess.

The periodontist said he was surprised to find nothing abnormal or unusual during the surgery.  He thought he might find some sort of debris under the skin of my gum, like a tiny food particle or even just a lot of tartar buildup.  But there was nothing.  So he did a biopsy.  It will take seven to 10 days to get those results back.

Picture Day

Pretty kitty, sitting in the sun.

Off-duty doggie racing along the shoreline at Lake Erie.

He was in a big rush to get to these doggies.  He really, really wanted to play with them.

Happy doggie riding in the car.  He loves to go for a ride.