He looked at me and pursed his lips "And they pay you for that?" He inquired.
"Yes, they do." I answered. He looked at my shirt again, almost tapping his fingers on the logo. "Internet Technology, They pay you for that?" he repeated, "You work for them?" "Yes." I responded. He shook his head, then reached down to pet Freeway.

Freeway was why I was there. Well OK the old man was why I was there too. You never know who you are going to meet when taking a dog on a "visiting pets" program. A lot of the people we visit are barely mentally competent, but quite a few are merely old. This guy was plenty sharp. I'm not quite sure why he was so surprised that I would get paid for doing something related with "Internet Technology." On later reflection I wonder if he thought that the company logo I was wearing was related to our visit. It wasn't, but in the earlier years of the company it could have been. When I first started working there I took my dog Oso on visiting pet visits during the work day with the knowledge and support of my manager. But things have changed and now it was just a convenient clean shirt.

Several times a month Freeway and I go to a hospital, convalescent home or other care facility. A lot of people would call Freeway a "therapy dog" and often I do as well because that is the common usage. Organizations such as the Delta Society prefer a rather narrower use of the term. In their terminology the dog and handler team is assigned to work with a specific individual, with a planned interaction intended to assist that individual. The interaction and how it progresses toward the goal are usually noted and recorded. Very few of the visits I have done fall into that range. Most of what we do is "meet and greet". It is purely a social interaction, mostly between the dog and the person we are visiting.

Even if there is no specific therapeutic protocol involved these visits can be very meaningful to the people we visit. Still it is important that the volunteers not get too full of themselves and puffed up with "do-gooderness". Not everyone we visit appreciates the visits. We try hard to never impose our dogs on someone. Even if it isn't their "home" we are still visitors in their world. They have so little control over what happens in their world. We give each individual as much "say-so" as we can. Sometimes we have a fine line to walk.

On this same visit, for example, there was a woman in the day room who was afraid of the dogs. While we couldn't allow her desires to override those of the others in the room (she was competent to leave if she chose), we could and did take care not to place the dog near her. We did not allow the dogs to focus on her. We did what we could to show respect for her wishes and concerns.

Our visit style can vary quite a bit from one facility to another. At one hospital almost all the visits are in individual patient rooms. Sometimes we go to a day room, a kind of social gathering spot. Sometimes we spend half an hour in one place, sometimes we do shorter visits in a number of locations throughout the facility. For the most part we don't develop much individual rapport with the people we visit. There are other styles of visits where a person might spend as much as an hour with a single individual. The nature of the interaction between the visiting team and those visited can vary. No rules written in stone.

People often ask what kind of dog makes a good therapy dog. I have a nice long written answer. But here is a button I created with the short answer.

When I first started doing visiting with my dog I read a book by Kathy Diamond Davis. Then I started looking around on the web. At the time (1996) there was very little information about therapy dogs on the web. In looking I discovered a lot of interesting dog activities, but no site covered them all. So that is what I set out to do. I created Dog-Play (now also Dog Play) to be a kind of serendipity introduction to dog related activities. And I made a specific focus on visiting dogs and therapy dogs. I've collected book resources, discussion groups, web sites, and groups to join. I've collected much more than that. And you know what? The lazy sog will write me to ask for information rather than looking for what I've spent so much time collecting. Oh well, that's people for you.

He's balancing, he's balancing! Yes, Freeway is balancing to the sheep. Heh - dog sports can come up with some really strange terminology. In herding "balance" refers to the dog's ability to shift its position to hold the sheep in relationship to something else. Typically it is the handler, but it might be an opening in a fence, or chute or ...

This Sunday when we were practicing herding Freeway started compensating for my position relative to the sheep. When I moved left, he moved left i.e. away from me and around the sheep. And if I suddenly changed to move to the right, he started moving to the right. The general idea is for the dog to keep the sheep to the handler. So in the open where the sheep have no particular preferred direction it is handler at 12 o'clock, dog a 6 o'clock - on opposite side with sheep in between. If the sheep have a "draw" then the dog should shift to keep the sheep from heading that way, and keep the sheep with the handler.

This "balancing" movement is a huge improvement for him. Just last week if I shifted position I found myself standing right next to my dog. He wasn't responding to my change in position. This week he seemed to be getting it. This is the fun thing about herding, watching the instincts in the dog develop and emerge.

When we started Freeway was very one sided. One sided refers to a preference for moving in one direction - either clockwise or counter-clockwise. He prefers counter-clockwise. At first he was working very hard at not going the way I wanted. But last week he seemed more comfortable going both ways. This week he shifted without much effort. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens on Saturday.

Dogs and cats: watching them is great for keeping a sense of perspective.

Freeway and Tsuki had a great play this morning. They played bitey face and smack down. The interesting thing about the game of bitey face is that neither tries to "dominate" the other. Mostly the entire game is played lying down. It consists of much noise and "growling" and groaning, and swinging open mouths back and forth. I have no idea what the rules are and there don't seem to be winners or losers.

Freeway started herdng training in April. He did not look like an exciting herding prospect. But he is actually coming along fairly well. Oh I don't expect him to be high in trial, but I think he will do a respectable job ... maybe. At least he is a little more interested in obeying me than Tsuki is.

Tsuki ... what can I say. Being a sheepdog is in his blood. I have to be careful with him because he won't tell me when he is hurting. He konws I'll take him off the sheep. Last week he wore holes in his pads and I didn't even notice. I only ended up checking his feet because he was slower than normal in agility practice. Agility doesn't hold quite that high level of interest. So this time when we went out to herd I dug out his booties. He didn't mind them at all. I think he may have been grateful for them. Anyway he certainly was smiling as we practiced putting the sheep through panels and into pens.

I sense a change coming on in the winds of my life. Not a big change But I've been drifting with the tide for some time now. It is time for me to set sail and chart a course that might actually go somewhere. Ok, maybe I don't want to go anywhere in particular. But since I seem to be going I may as well select the destination.

The metaphors I have chosen carry special irony as I've never liked to sail. I like a kayak on quiet waters. I love to snooze in a row boat and listen to the slap, slap, slap of wavelets against the sides. But I've never felt a desperate need to go somewhere.

A little over seven years ago a friend of mine listened to my grumblings about my then current job and suggested I might be a good fit for the team she was on. She was right. It was a company of like minded folks. Even the CEO shared my passion for dogs. Our pets were allowed in the office. I found there a niche that appreciated my form of being "anal". Everyone on the team was that way. That is what made us good. Our primary task was to take technical information and to make it available to non-technical people. Most of this information related to using software and computer hardware.

The job perfectly fit my technical orientation coupled with a long history of teaching science to the general public. When I started that job I had literally never seen any Windows version about 3.1. Supporting Windows 95 was my new job. And supporting hardware. No one else really wanted it. I was supposed to be assigned a subject matter expert who would review my documentation and ensure that it was accurate. Well it turned out that the folks assigned felt they had a lot more interesting/important things to do. Getting information from them was difficult enough, but getting them to review the information after I had written it up was almost impossible. So I became my own subject matter expert, and a darned good one at that.

I remember that after collecting about 3 months worth of documents yet to be approved I prevailed upon my manager to allow me to publish them without the approvals. I presented her with some statistics I collected from the tickets the support analysts handled. I said they needed the information sooner rather than later, there was nothing risky in it, and darn it, I wanted to produce something for all this money they were paying me. I got the approval to go and a new chapter in history was written.

As time went on my co-workers became increasingly comfortable with my technical orientation. Soon they were coming to me for problem solving. At first this amazed me, I was the new kid on the block. But over time I realized that we each had different strengths and mine ... Well I grok technology. Extrapolation and a willingness, even a desire, to experiment have served me especially well.

Another thing that was a foundation to my success at this new job was my experience in running an information oriented web site, and participating in Usenet with the goal of educating the clueless. In 1996 I first created my Dog-Play web site. I had surveyed the web and I found lots of sites about dogs, but nothing explaining the activities I found mentioned here and there. I had become involved with taking my dog to convalescent homes to cheer people up, and I found little on the web about that activity. So I decided to create a web site that would introduce people to these activities. In doing that I learned HTML, web design, and some very good practices that have served me well in my current endeavors. I also participated in the dogs groups in Usenet. I deliberately chose to participate to improve my skills at tactful education. It was difficult at times because I feel so strongly about things. That activity was key to honing my skills of persuasion. Taken together, the HTML skills, and the tactful education skills, proved to be the basis on which I made our technical knowledge more accessible to everyone.

Everything changes, and big software companies change more than most things. So it wasn't too long before the company lost its standing in the top 100 best places to work. Still I found the work a challenge, and I had a great team to work with so I kept drifting along. And naturally I continued to develop my technical skills. I found that beyond the job I was hired to do I was often solving technical problems, like how to make a change to 2500 documents, or how to analyze our web logs in a meaningful way. One co-worker and I became well known as excellent testers for software roll-outs because we could break things in nothing flat. As technical as I am I also can think like, and behave like, an ordinary user. And that is how I tested stuff. Plunking around and clicking this and that and not reading instructions.

My lastest tack on the ocean of life came when the company got swallowed by a bigger fish. I didn't want to commute to the new HQ, and I felt that I didn't want to commit myself to accepting a position with a company I knew only by rumor. As I explained to one co-worker "If I stay on for transition with a termination date and we like each other we can negotiate. And if I don't like them I have my severance and a graceful way out". Well, just about the very first thing I did was solve a problem my new manager said was impossible. When I listened to the situation I couldn't believe it would be that difficult to solve. I didn't know their system, it just wasn't very logical that the task would be "impossible." Of course they didn't mean literally impossible, just that it couldn't be done with a reasonable investment of time and effort, but still .... So I asked them to please send me the file so "I can see the magnitude of the problem" It took them almost a week to get it to me. When I got it I opened it, took one look, shook my head. 3 hours later I had the problem solved.

Well now I've impressed the heck out of them and they want me to stay. I've agreed, but honestly I have my doubts. So I've got the scope out, searching the horizons, seeing if there are any likely new waters.