Jacob on the Ski Team

Shirley Gets Dropped Off

No matter how you look at it, our final day with Shirley was a big one. Jesse was increasingly rude as the day came close, simply because she hurt. Jacob was very matter-of-fact about it, but clearly was spending more cuddle time with Shirley. Only Ben approached me and asked if he could get out of school to come with me when I dropped her off. The boy who always thinks of others before himself simply said, holding back the tears, “I think I’m going to hurt more than anyone when we drop her off.” What’s a dad to do? So on Friday morning, 2/4, Shirley and I went to the Darien High School, where she represented Guiding Eyes For The Blind at a volunteer fair for the students. A lady manning a booth for another organization told me, “Your dog is going to draw a lot more kids than my bowl of candy!” And she was right. Jacob was the primary handler, and he and Shirley were wonderful representatives. At the designated time I took the leash and the food pouch, he said his “goodbye” and Shirley and I made our way to the Middle School. I took her into the main office, where we had Ben paged. Walking past all his classmates (who were in the main lobby having a special luncheon event) Shirley, Ben and I walked out to the car and headed for Yorktown Heights, NY, to drop off Shirley for her next big journey.

At Yorktown Shirley was clearly excited, as she could smell dog everywhere. In the building where we dropped her off we saw a dog getting his teeth operated on (through the window on a door), and could hear and smell lots of puppy. Shirley was weighed, and has maintained her size of 52 pounds for 3 months now. She’s just going to be a small dog. Then we walked her into the Kennels. Immediately we were greeted by a cacophony of barking. Shirley froze, neither going backward or forward. In fact, she went down in a cower. When I bent down to comfort her, she scooted under my legs. Eventually we got her into her kennel. Though she was clearly intimidated by all the barking, she checked out every corner. Her roommate had not yet arrived, so Ben and I were locked into the kennel and could spend a good amount of time getting her acclimated. Finally the time came, we removed her collar, gave our last hugs and kisses, and left Shirley to her new home. The plan is she gets tested in four days (Tuesday) to determine if she makes the training program or not. More postings to come…