I just signed up for a digital scrapbooking class that is free for a limited time. Check out www.jessicasprague.com My sister in law has taken her classes and liked them. She has some really neat stuff on her pages.

Little Decorator in the Making!

Tornados in Kansas... What is a girl to do? Wednesday we had sporadic tornado warnings so there were no outside activities all day. That's just torture for Miss Madelynn! Last summer I took Wilton Course 1 cake decorating class and my sisters and I are planning on taking the rest of them this summer so I thought I would brush up my cake decorating skills. Madelynn, being 2 going on 16 as she is, decided that playdough with the cookie cutters is for babies if Mommy is going to bake a real cake so instead of practicing my decorating skills, I ended up trying to simplify it for my almost 3 year old. It was interesting. As you can see, she picked the colors and the pattern. She surprised me at how well she did holding the bag. I think we only had hot pink frosting plopping out the back of the bag 1/2 dozen times or so and for a kid that age, I'd say that's not bad. Her biggest downfall was that she wanted to suck down all the frosting until I thought she was going to barf neon. She kept asking "Can I lick it now Mommy? How about now? Are we done yet so I can lick it? Can I help you lick it? MMMMM I like the frosting so much!" (In her 100 words a minute speech pattern.) The whole time Trenton was in the other room. He could not have cared less that we were having a sugar fest in the kitchen. I've never seen a kid less motivated or interested in candy - frosting - cake or anything else kids go nuts over. I'm thankful, but sometimes I think it would be easier if he were motivated by a piece of candy.

Catching up...

So, I started this blog a year ago and have failed to keep up. This time, I'm going to try harder! This started as a blog about our therapy dog and now I'm going to broaden the topics. First, though, I'll update you on the dog. Neville is amazing! He went to school with me everyday last year and won the hearts of the staff and students. Students practiced reading to Neville almost everyday. I did an informal action research project to see if reading to Neville actually helped increase reading fluency and my results showed that my students with disabilities did increase the same words per minute throughout the year as students without disabilities. Ideally, I would have measured wpm of students who had been allowed time to read to Neville vs. students who did not regularly read to him, but the numbers and qualifying factors I used did not allow for that. I will try it again in the future to see if I get similar results. Pretty good initial results, though! Check out the video on the tab to the right that NBC Nightly News aired about using dogs to teach reading.

How does Neville help Trenton? Originally, we got Neville to track down Trenton when he ran off. While he does do this, we have noticed that Trenton does not run away as often as he did when we didn't have him. We can tell when he gets tired, he is ornery and doesn't listen to us. We hand him Neville's leash and tell him to make Neville walk by us- and for some reason being in charge of someone else- I guess it's actually having responsibility- makes him follow directions much better! He helps with speech because we can teach him all kinds of silly tricks and Trenton has to give him the command. I can facilitate the speech command to have a certain kind of speech pattern that he is working on (like consonant vowel consonant sounds). The final consonant sound is something Trenton struggles with. One trick we do is give Neville an ice cube. Trenton has to say "ICE" before he gives him the ice. the /s/ sound can be tricky - especially starting/ stopping appropriately, so that's one way to practice. Neville is such a quick learner- the kindergartners taught him how to make snow angels on command last winter.

Neville is also calming for Trenton. He isn't too sensitive to schedule changes, but sometimes he gets upset when things don't go the way he thinks they need to go. He will scream and pout, but Neville will go sit by him and they cuddle together which calms him down. It's so cute when they nap together!

The kids? Madelynn is 2 going on 16, I think. She is talking non-stop. The other day we were eating dinner and she looks at my husband and says "Dad, I'm gonna need some money." Knowing her, he just shook his head and said "I kinda figured you would..." I don't know if she has self esteem issues or what but she is constantly asking me "Mommy, do you love me?" I tell her I do at least 50 times a day, so I don't' know why she questions it!

Me? Right now I'm enjoying summer break and watching my 6 month old nephew twice a week. 3 kids keeps me really busy! We are trying to go swimming as often as we can but the weather isn't allowing it! Twice this week it has stormed when we've tried to go to the pool. I built a trampoline in our backyard this afternoon which was great fun! I did not anticipate how hard it was going to be to pull those springs to fit the frame! Then I felt like an idiot when our 90 year old neighbor came over and made it fit. I work out 5 days a week, and he's stronger than me? I think there's a problem!

Neville at School

Sorry it's been so long. With school starting, it's been crazy busy! Neville has been doing awesome at school. He loves to listen to the kids read. He looks lazy because I will tell him to sit and stay and he just rolls over and goes to sleep. I guess that's fine because the kids pet him and play with his ears and tail and he does nothing except wag his tail.
At recess I give kids the leash and they walk him around the playground. As the school year gets further along I will let him off the leash to play frisbee or ball, but right now we are still establishing the ground rules.
Already I have had some kids earn time with Neville for one reason or another. In that time we take him for a walk around the school grounds and then we go back to my classroom and I take the harness off and let him/her brush him and then I give the kids some dog bones and we practice some commands. It takes about 15- 20 minutes, but if it helps keep kids on task and motivated to do well I'm all for it!
We are off to a great start - I'll keep you posted for the rest of the year!

The Big Switch

Hello everyone!
It's been a while since I've posted. We have had a lot going on lately. When we came home, it was a big transition. At the hotel, everyone was tired and calm. When we came home, Trenton was back to his usual crazy playing routine, and it scared Ronday. Then my Mother in Law suffered a severe stroke and less than a week later passed away, so we did not have a lot of time to help Ronday with the transition and work with Trenton. The whole family (including Ronday) spent a lot of time in a hospital room and then a nursing home room in very close quarters for a week. Later, I was in contact with Megan and Sarah and we mutually decided that since one of the reasons we wanted a service dog was to retrieve Trenton when he ran away and if he was afraid of Trenton, the chances of him retrieving successfully were pretty slim. Since he will also be coming to school with me, we decided to make the switch before school started so there isn't excessive change for my students.
Hopefully, we will meet up next week sometime and get our new dog. We will be getting a yellow lab named Nevile. We think that the lab will be much less easily intimidated than the Cavalier, if not because of the difference in personality, then because of the difference in size. I will keep you posted. Sarah and Megan have both been so great to work with through this whole deal. I so much appreciate everything they have done to help with our dogs.

Graduation Ceremony

During our graduation ceremony, Sarah Holbert, the CEO of CARES gave a grateful speech to all the people who helped them get the dogs trained successfully. If they were bred by CARES, they start at a home that welps the pups, then they go to a puppy raiser who trains them the basic commands. From there they go to a correctional facility to finish the training. When they are done, they come back to CARES to be tested and get health evaluations. Once they pass the test, we are invited to come to Concordia for the final assessment. We are trained as handlers how to give the commands and what the expectations are for the dogs. After a few days of that we have public access tests when we take the dogs out in public to see how well they behave with us and how they listen to our commands. IF they pass that test we are granted a handler license. Because it is such an intense program, they dogs are granted public access based on the Americans with Disabilities Act, Kansas law 39-1011 thru 39-1013. Some dogs do not make the cut. They can be adopted out as "career change" dogs. They are still excellent dogs, they just may not be cut out for the rigorous work that assistance dogs are expected to do.
I got off of the subject a little, but I wanted to show you pictures of our graduation ceremony. We were presented the dogs by either their puppy trainer or by the donator. We were lucky enough to be able to meet our breeder for Ronday. She is pictured with us.

Our training

We had some very intense training on how we need to maintain Ronday's skills once we got home. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were all training days. We went to the park and the dogs were petted by about 75 kids one day, we went to Pizza Hut and had a training on restaurant etiquette one evening. Another evening, a friend of mine, Emily, who got a golden retriever named Crosley and I took our kids and dogs to see Kung Fu Panda. Trenton and Ronday were a little scared in several of the scenes.
Thursday was our public access test. We took the dogs to the Salina mall to make sure they would behave properly in public. They had to sit and wait while we left them and then they had distractions to see if they would get up or not. Then food was dropped in front of them to see if they would try to eat it. (which they are obviously not supposed to do.) Ronday did excellent on his test. He heeled by the stroller walking around the mall very well. I don't know if he was half as tired as I was, but we went back to the hotel that night and I didn't even want to take Trenton swimming. I just wanted to sleep!
We also went to Ellsworth correctional facility on Thursday. Most of the dogs were trained by inmates at either Ellsworth or a correctional facility in Colorado. It was incredible to see the impact that the dog program had on the inmates. They said that it taught them responsibility, commitment and work ethic that they did not have before they went into jail. (One of them even said that was probably the reason he was in jail.) He also said that working with the dogs was an incredible part of the healing process for them. It was clear they took great pride in their jobs as dog trainers. Some of them were getting emotional about how much it has affected their lives. That made us Moms get emotional about how much their hard work is going to help our children. I never dreamed that first of all, I would willingly take my not-quite-5 year old to a jail and second that I would feel so indebted to a prisoner. It was a bizarre but rewarding feeling that I think all the new dog owners felt. One inmate told me that the dog program was "A Gift from God" and that it has changed his life, with his eyes welling up with tears.