service dog

It been a long running discussion at our house - should we get a service dog for Tiny? Scrappy is a great emotional support to her, but as she goes looking for more independence, should we look into an animal who is trained to do more, to help her out in an emergency situation.

It came up again tonight, because someone offered to rehome a service dog to us - a lovely German Shepherd named Riley.

Lord.

This was hard to pass up.

Because my first dog was a German Shepherd.

Her name was Riley.

She’s the stuff of legends.

But, in the end, the dog was trained for PTSD, which none of us have, and could certainly be helped by someone who needs her more than we do.

Which led us to the discussion of what exactly we’d all need from a service dog. This is what we decided:

For Tiny: a dog who could bark when she couldn’t, drag the books out of her hands at precisely 11 pm on school nights, turn the light off and make sure it stays that way. It would also carry the daily WiFi password and only dispense it after piano practice and chores were done.

For Kooka: sort of like a Swiss Alps St, Bernard, her dog would carry one of her 4,227 water bottles around it’s neck. It would follow her to dance class where it would keep spare hair ties wrapped around its tail, and always happen to be filming when her quadruple pirouettes are flawless.

Punk’s dog would be able to sniff out a dead Prismacolor marker and dispose it without ever removing the cap. We suspect Punk would amass an extra five square feet of room in his dorm if the happened. The dog would drive him to the Mall of America once a week, and carry an emergency pack with one cold Dr. Pepper and a Taco Bell Doritos locos taco.

For Rico: This dog has to be on his game. Aside from a few basic things like toting things around when Rico’s hands are full, this dog also has to be able to brew coffee, get the mail (from inside the post office) and check his phone roughly every 8 minutes to make sure “nothing hot is coming down the pipe.”

It was unanimously decided that my dog would have just one task. To continuously check the doors at night to make sure everything is locked. This actually seems like a doable task, and has me thinking that I may be the only family member ready to take on this sort of experience. I’m thinking German Shepherd, but I’ll keep my options opem.