you folk are learning.....but keep in mind experience comes from bad experience----and i have had alot--- therefore those expeiences. will "color" my opinions.... my other daughter gwen. ( north carolinq) has a bunch of corgi's. and found out how much fun it is to cheer up people with her dogs doing therra-y work... she just added 2 to her collection and is in th e process. of getting them ok'd-- i was once a therapy dog inspector-- before they gave me 7 thick books to read about being a therapy dog...the one biggest and baddest problem is. to jump or not to jump. 

And ----just how long and pointy are the toenails--  because even the slightest scratch an older person can take six months to heal  ...so there's no way you want that dog the cause any break in anybody's skin even if it is in the process of being friendly ...most of these therapy dogs are tiny little things you pick up and put in somebody's lap or in bed beside them but in my world you don't do that.  ------youve all seen pictures of George in bed with Bella after she's had surgery but George by now is a very cool calculating service dog who knows exactly where his feet are..

so if I take a dane  into a hospital I will make a point of standing by the persons head ---and if they want the dog to jump up---i. ask the dog to jump which puts all those toenails about at the bedridden persons waste totally padded with blankets in my case I would never stand at the foot of the bed and take any chance on my dog putting his feet on the bed----- little details of life so in my case when you talk about getting certified therapy dog I would always have to first consider the person who would be handling the dog in the first place.  any any of my danes. can simply do a walkthrough and not even stick their head in anybody's lap or use my wonderful purple fry pan. to keep the dog's attention where i want it to be.....   that cheers everybody up because they're so funny looking in the first place for letting a dog jump on a bed it has to be a calculated maneuver -------tiny little dog pick him up and put him at the person's feet but you certainly don't want to those toenails-----if they scratch somebody's hand in a nursing home. it's nearly a federal project.. I still have the hole in my hand I got about two weeks ago with it from Wilson.

the absolutely worst case scenario I have ever been in with the potential of costing me millions of dollars---I had as animal episodes ------the call for a Great Dane to jump and put their feet on someone's shoulder look him in the face----- not something I'd allow my dogs to do ----whatever---- but I spent time ahead of time getting feisty ---a lovely female dog i used her lot in commercials I got her to jump put her feet on somebody's shoulders lick.  him in the face in preparation------ so I go to the location for this commercial and I got out of the car and just about dropped becausr the person that she was supposed to put her shoulder feed on the shoulders of was ---Cher ----and all I could think of was if that dog miscalculates by about 1/2 an inch and scratches that face I'm gonna be broke------- so having been terrified at the topic of scratching somebody's face, I'm nervous about it .....I'd like to discourage it as quickly as possible and anybody babysitting puppies around here you could make me very angry by letting a dog even attempt to get near your face because puppies have a way of jumping and snapping and that's even worse ----------so let's really concentrate on 4 on the floor right from when they're little babies..

so now on the topic of training volunteers we have a lot of new volunteers lately which is absolutely wonderful---- we need them we could we could stand all we could get ---because we never have enough ---there's always more things ---at any rate when a new person is around they don't know some of the rules we have or why we have them which is even worse and just yesterday we had two situations where one man and his son decided it was fun to chase the dogs stamping their feet out and chasing the dogs that that was would be fun as it as a puppy but to have that Basic Instinct in the dog when they get loose in some parking lot on Route 1 ----you don't want anybody any dog to even think of running away..---- so we don't do that -------the other thing we don't do is tug of war ------these cute little 30 pound puppies in about 20 minutes ae gonna  weigh 150 pounds would be very capable of grabbing your pant leg and dragging you up and over the hill ----so we discourage any concept of tug of war ----- awfully long time ago a dog did get ahold of my  shirtsleeve and pulled...

 I fell down these are big dogs ---so it's called plan ahead..

well there's another related dragging of people in my repertoire ---it was winter the main person was Bobby Orr----- the location was in downtown Boston where they had set up an RV to keep everybody from freezing to death----- and the shot called for a dog Walker to get dragged on the sidewalk about a whole block ----- they did her up with newspapers and cardboard and things  and   I had a couple dogs on the end of a string rope leash whatever---- and I use this horse halters backwards and upside down as harnesses and I just got at the end of the shot behind the camera and called those dogs and they came running and she was on her face in the snow plowing snow up in front of her as she was dragged...but they pulled her with no trouble whatsoever -----so with that in mind we discourage having dogs even think about pulling which is sometimes a little awkward when somebody goes from walking to a wheelchair either permanently or temporarily the dog's got to be re educated about yes it's alright to pull.

Well one more really short wheelchair story..  for whatever reason I can't remember---- I was in a wheelchair in Costco with Bentley ----and I'll bet you without fear of contradiction I am the only one to be thrown out of Costco for speeding.