Demo Dog

I've been making public appearances lately. Mary says "every day's a training opportunity" so I'm taking advantage of each and every chance I get. On Sunday four of us OFP dogs took our people to San Francisco to do a K9 presentation at Pier 80 for Fleet Week. Mary did some demonstrations with her hunky Golden Retriever (and my pal) C.J. while she talked about Operation Freedom Paws. She talked about what the dogs do for the veterans, what we dogs learn to do, and how people shouldn't judge folks with a service dog just because they don't have a visible injury. (And we pit bulls know all about that sort of prejudice.)

There was a guy there who took this MOST EXCELLENT photo of me and Janet. I'm the very attentive one on the right.

Other dogs demonstrated suitcase-sniffing (BOring), searching for a person with a hot dog in her pocket (yawn) and then bite work. This involved military dogs being TOLD to jump on a man in a padded suit and bite his arms!!! That is not something Janet would ever allow me to do, for sure. Mary was concerned that I might get over-excited and bark, since I'd never seen bite work before or been around attack dogs (at least not as far as we know). I didn't bark, but C.J. did....lol! I just sat up and watched closely, mostly because I didn't want those dogs coming anywhere near us.

Here I am listening to Mary's demo, and watching Janet's back. She was a little annoyed and thought I was misbehaving because I wouldn't do a proper heel next to her knee. Even though she doesn't need her back watched because she doesn't have PTSD, I know other service dogs do that for their veterans in class. So I figured I should do it for her, too. That photographer wasn't going to sneak up on Janet while I was around! This is what Mary calls "obedient disobedience" from a service dog----the dog does what the person needs, even if s/he doesn't know it's needed. Janet didn't even figure it out until she downloaded the photo today!

Mary's was the final presentation. Afterwards everyone wanted to pet us four dogs. HAH!! No one asked to pet the hot dog finders or the suitcase-sniffers----or especially the bite dogs! The man with the microphone said they had promised The City there wouldn't be any contact at the K9 event between The Public and The Dogs. So Janet whispered, "But if we happen to encounter people in the parking lot, they could pet the dogs??" and the man said into the microphone, "But if you happen to encounter these people in the parking lot, you could pet their dogs!" so after pictures were taken, Janet and I headed for the door. The other groups' demo dogs got loaded into trucks like the one I got put into on my way to the shelter. I felt a little sorry for them.

Janet and I spent quite a while standing outside the building afterwards, talking about Operation Freedom Paws and Bad Rap and BACS and rescuing and training a shelter dog. And Janet let a LOT of folks pet me. Then we OFP dogs worked the crowd with our people while they handed out "Vote for Mary Cortani for CNN Hero" flyers. Sailors and Marines and Canadian sailors petted me and said what a wonderful dog I am.

It was a good day to be a Demo-Dog!