Sato Ord
Member
My back and head injuries have started to really catch up on me so the VA doc wrote a letter stating that in his professional opinion I should have a large service dog to help me maintain my balance. To make a long story short I couldn't see waiting out the eight to seventeen year waiting list for someone else to train a dog for me, so I trained my own Great Dane, Indie, to do the job. Since I've been training dogs for around thirty years it just made sense to do it myself.
She's been wonderful, and has really taken to doing her work. You can call it anthropomorphizing if you like, but she appears to take great pride in doing her job well.
It is much easier to get a dog registered as a service dog than I expected.
This morning I took a large load of laundry to the laundry room and got my wife's help. We left the dog in the condo. Indie opened the sliding glass, back door and went looking for me. The neighbors told me she first went to the pool, then, ignoring them, (they were trying to call her to keep her from getting out into the parking lot), she went to my car, and when she couldn't find me in either place she went to the front door of the condo and waited for me to find her. She was an all business, no nonsense working dog the whole time.
Now what does all of this have to do with guns. Well, just to tie it all in, when I am carrying she is such an attention getter no one notices the bulge under my shirt, and if they do see it printing slightly in the back they assume, since I have a dog with an orange vest, that it's a brace or other medical appliance.
Also, a six foot, three inch tall man walking a one hundred pound dog is visually intimidating and keeps the local neighborhoodlums at bay. Using a cane or other support would be like wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'm a helpless victim, please mug me." Besides, canes and walkers are out because I tend to fall backwards when my balance fails, and the dog just seems to know it's about to happen and braces me up.
She's been wonderful, and has really taken to doing her work. You can call it anthropomorphizing if you like, but she appears to take great pride in doing her job well.
It is much easier to get a dog registered as a service dog than I expected.
This morning I took a large load of laundry to the laundry room and got my wife's help. We left the dog in the condo. Indie opened the sliding glass, back door and went looking for me. The neighbors told me she first went to the pool, then, ignoring them, (they were trying to call her to keep her from getting out into the parking lot), she went to my car, and when she couldn't find me in either place she went to the front door of the condo and waited for me to find her. She was an all business, no nonsense working dog the whole time.
Now what does all of this have to do with guns. Well, just to tie it all in, when I am carrying she is such an attention getter no one notices the bulge under my shirt, and if they do see it printing slightly in the back they assume, since I have a dog with an orange vest, that it's a brace or other medical appliance.
Also, a six foot, three inch tall man walking a one hundred pound dog is visually intimidating and keeps the local neighborhoodlums at bay. Using a cane or other support would be like wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'm a helpless victim, please mug me." Besides, canes and walkers are out because I tend to fall backwards when my balance fails, and the dog just seems to know it's about to happen and braces me up.