On the big screen

The organization for which Steve and I raise puppies — Canine Companions for Independence (CCI) — takes pride in the fact it was the first to train dogs to assist folks with physical disabilities. CCI started in 1975. But Guide Dogs for the Blind began decades before then, in 1942. We’ve known CCI puppy-raisers who previously raised “seeing-eye” dogs. Steve and I have always heard that training is even more demanding than what CCI dogs undergo. The dogs must learn not only to obey complex commands but also when to disobey an order to protect their human (for example, refusing to walk them into the path of an oncoming bus). Steve and I haven’t known much more than that about what’s involved in the training. However this week we learned a lot.

Photograph by Robert Schneider

A new documentary film, Pick of the Litter, takes a close but wide-ranging look at the process. Tuesday afternoon Steve and I and Adagio saw the movie, along with several friends and other puppy-sitters and raisers. Adagio didn’t seem at all interested, even when the big screen was filled with squealing, yipping youngsters. But the rest of us were riveted.

The film opens with the whelping of a litter, then follows the progress of its three male and two female members. It’s suspenseful (some of the gang graduate as guides, but some don’t make the cut), and we were surprised by how familiar many aspects of the experience felt. Some commands are identical — “let’s go!” for one example. Another: the Guide Dogs for the Blind puppies wear halters just like CCI requires.

Other parts — like traffic training — are very different. What shocked me most was that the GDB puppy-raisers apparently can flunk out along the way. They don’t appear to take their pups to twice-monthly classes (as we do), and we saw no signs of the vibrant puppy-raising community CCI seems to foster. Instead, they’re observed by a professional every three months, and the organization can (and does) summarily take puppies back. It made me much less interested in ever raising a seeing-eye dog, as enthralling as their work is.

Before seeing Pick of the Litter, I was a bit worried that our documentarian friends Alberto Lau and Bob Schneider might be discouraged from continuing with their project. For years, they’ve been filming Steve and me raising successive puppies, with the plan of creating a film about the puppy-raising experience. They attended this new film with us and didn’t seem bothered by its coming out first. Although they have shot countless hours of footage, they haven’t yet  wrapped up their work because they’ve been waiting for ONE of our trainees to graduate (something that hasn’t happened for eight years.)  Adagio may not have been enthralled by Pick of the Litter. But Steve and I are still hoping he’ll be the next star. 

Puppy pack goes to the movies

I was disappointed when I learned that only three other CCI puppies (and four of their puppy-raisers) would be attending the movie matinee at Liberty Station Saturday with Beverly, Steve, and me. “Yeah, it won’t be a total clown car,” the PR who had organized it said. She and I agreed we both were rather fond of clown cars.

But the outing still proved entertaining. The movie we saw was the Dog Movie du Jour, Lasse Hallstrom’s A Dog’s Purpose. Controversy has surrounded this film, stemming from the allegations that one of the animal actors was mistreated (forced to jump into a body of water when she was terrified). But I’d read enough about the incident to make me think the allegations were unfounded. A separate question was the wildly sentimental plot (“It’s canine Buddhism!” Steve exclaimed with it was over.) He and I normally tend to avoid tear-jerkers. But we wound up enjoying it in spite of ourselves (and all our tears that the film jerked.)

All the pups were well-behaved, although our seats were located at the other end of the aisle from the others, which limited the chances for doggy misbehavior.

She sat at our feet. In The Lot theaters, each seat us surrounded by tons of space, though there is the distraction of waiters serving food and drinks.

Target and Dharma sat at the other end of the aisle. Note that both of them appear to be watching the screen ahead.

Beverly appeared to be fascinated by many of the parts about Bailey, the retriever who is the film’s central doggy character. But she dozed off during many of the corgi and shepherd sections.

None of the cinematic parts were as interesting as the (brief) opportunity to schmooze with the other movie-goers.

Then we all left the theater and made the pups line up for a photo. THAT was no fun at all.

Movie mutt

There’s comes a time in every one of our puppies’ lives when we take them to the movies for the first time. I mean, of course, to a real movie theater with big screens (not just our friend Alberto’s Friday Night at the Movies gatherings in Hillcrest). For Beverly, it came last night.

Having nothing else to do, Steve and I and our younger son decided to catch a screening of Hell or High Water at the Fashion Valley mall. I bought tickets online, so we got there at the very last minute, and to our dismay found the only empty seats were in the first row. But since we had Beverly with us, this turned out to be a blessing, particularly as the seats weren’t horribly close to the screen, the location gave us lots of room to spread out Beverly’s “place mat,”and it was easy to keep an eye on her.

The screen was several feet in front of where she was lying.

I needed to pay attention. Although she stretched out and snoozed for one 20-minute period, she squirmed a lot and spent a lot of time trying to explore under my seat, where I can only assume popcorn morsels were present. She paid almost no attention to the screen (except for one moment when the Jeff Bridges character’s coonhound appeared. She thought that was interesting.)

Still, we’ve seen a lot worse behavior, over the years. She didn’t make a sound. Didn’t have any toileting errors or stick her nose into anyone else’s affairs.

With the improvements in home-based movie-viewing and programming options, we don’t get out to the big screen as much as we once did. But after last night’s experience, we wouldn’t hesitate to take Beverly with us again.

Groovy

Kora (left) and Kyndall never seemed to mind sharing our large wire kennel. They still managed to do plenty of wrestling in it.

I’ve always loved the Polish folk tale about the big family who lived in the one-room house. Unhappy about how crowded and chaotic their life was, they consulted the local rabbi. He told them they could fix their problems if they would move their cow inside the house with them.

Dubious, they followed his advice, but it only made things worse. When they complained about this to the rabbi, he calmly directed them to bring their chickens inside too. Subsequent visits resulted in more orders to add goats and geese and pigs. On the verge of going insane, the desperate family returned to the rabbi one final time. He told them to move all the animals back outside. The tiny cottage magically felt like a palace, quiet and orderly and filled only with humans.

Adding a three-and-a-half month-old puppy to our household mix is nowhere near as difficult as adding a whole menagerie. But in the wake of Kora’s departure yesterday, we’re back in our regular groove, and life feels so quiet.

I don’t mean to suggest that Kora was difficult to have around. On the contrary, she was a delightful reminder of just how good a very young pup can be. Friday night we took her to our regular movie/potluck group (leaving Kyndall home, kenneled with Tucker for company), and Kora was better behaved than any puppy we’ve ever taken there — extremely calm and easy-going.

Still, life with just Kyndall and Tucker is even easier. In answer to my question about whether going into heat changed Kyndall, Steve and I think the answer is a qualified Yes. She seems content to spend most of her time resting quietly near us (though Steve suggests she may just be recovering from the rigors of playing with Kora so much).

Dinos are okay. But dogs would be MUCH more interesting…

Last night we also took us with us to a real movie theater. Jurassic World was probably not the best choice to expose her to — there are so many bangs and screams and crashes in the second half of the film. But Kyndall (mostly) maintained her Down/Stay at my side. She even seemed interested in the screen action from time to time.

 

 

 

 

An increasingly sophisticated movie-goer

Dionne gets a lot of exposure to movies. We almost always take her to our friend Alberto’s home on Friday evenings, for our weekly potluck/filmic gatherings. When the place is jammed, we banish her to the balcony, but other nights she curls up at my feet. Recently Steve and I also made it out to see Ender’s Game and Gravity in the theaters, and Dionne came along on those outings too.

Steve thought all the explosions in both films made it hard for her to sleep. He thinks she’d be happier if we went to quieter movies or, better still, dog movies. (The all-time best for that was Eight Below, to which we took Tucker when he was in training. We wound up spending much of that movie watching him stare, enraptured, at the big screen.)

Dionne doesn’t do that, but she’s getting better about staying Down and staying Quiet. She’s less inclined to snorfle around for stray popcorn kernels (though she did dart out and grab a nice one while executing a Side command for Steve Saturday night.)

Dionne says dogs don’t need no stinkin’ 3D glasses.

Just beyond this spot, on the tiled area near the snack counters, is where one CCI pup in our care casually threw up.  Taking puppies to the movies creates so many more movie-going memories than ordinary folks get.