Mischa, my first service dog, a golden retriever, came to me courtesy of Northern California Golden
Retriever Rescue.
Please read more about Mischa at http://www.golden-rescue.org/success/misha/
misha.htm
Boo Boo Bear, my second service dog, a Newfoundland.
Every personality has its own genius, its own particular star of the soul. Mischa's was his profound spirituality and compassion, as well as his formidable intelligence. Héro La Lumiére's was his love, and patience with the adoring flocks of children who followed him whenever we went anywhere, amid their parents' cell phone and digital photography.
Boo Boo Bear's genius was his sense of humor.
Boo Boo, like Mischa and Héro, got me to places I could not get by myself. One such place was the Berkeley Jazz School, with a flight of stairs that might have confounded a spider. Not only did Boo Boo get me up the stairs; he beat his tail in time to the music in the Jazz Vocal Seminar, whereupon the teacher stopped the class to call attention to "The Boo Boo Bop".
When my husband and I were given Boo Boo Bear, we were living in a home at the bottom of a steep hill. It was in that home that I recovered from surgery that allowed me to lose one hundred and eighteen pounds, and Boo Boo aided my recovery by running to the local synagogue, at the top of the hill. This was the only place Boo Boo Bear ran to, and unless he was planning a religious conversion, I think it was his way of humoring me (I have a Ph.D. from Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union) and to make sure I didn't take my writing too seriously, especially the plays about the Spanish Inquisition and contemporary American Jewish life in the person of Henry Kissinger and a young aide during the Nixon administration's destruction of the democratic government of Chile.
Boo Boo didn't take anything too seriously. He slept through an earthquake. He walked on a horse exercizer at the therapeutic riding program in the Napa Valley where I taught, and where the volunteers would not work unless he performed the Boo Boo Bop.
Boo Boo Bear outlived the normal life expectancy for a Newfoundland by four months, and spent his final year in retirement in Saint Helena, California, helping Héro take over his service dog tasks.
If there is a gloriously glamorous nightclub in heaven hosting the world's great comedians, Boo Boo Bear is on stage, deflating the pompous and saving the serious, especially the lonely scholars and writers on whose conscience the world partly depends.
That is why, when gasoline prices inflated monstrously several months ago, I showed a picture of Boo Boo Bear to a similarly distressed patron at our local gas station. She and I looked at his picture, then at the cost of the gas and yelled, "Boo! Boo! Boooooooooo!"
And it wasn't even Halloween.
my third service dog.
Héro La Lumiére was taken ill very suddenly with pneumonia on the evening on December 11, 2008. X-rays revealed that he had a permanently enlarged esophagus, which would make future episodes of pneumonia very likely. Héro rejoined Kari Ann's beloved husband, Silas Warner, in Infinite Creation at five PM, Pacific Standard Time, on December 13, 2008.
When Boo Boo Bear needed to retire, I found Héro on Craig's List. His first owner was in prison, and had abused Héro to try to make him mean enough to guard his meth lab. An acquaintance of this animal abuser retrieved Héro from the pound and probable execution and advertised on Craig's List for a responsible owner. The Animal Rescue Foundation provided a dog trainer free of charge to evaluate Héro, and he and I have been together since that amazing day.
from Baywoof Magazine, Oakland, CA,
November 2007:
My real name is Héro La Lumiére, and my first owner sold meth. He
tried to starve me into being mean enough to guard his meth lab.
When the fool went to prison, a man who knew him rescued me but could not
afford to feed me. So his girlfriend put an ad on Craig's List to find me a
home, and Kari Ann adopted me.
My name, Héro La Lumiére, means "champion of light". And I can see the light really well now, and
run and play with my kitty friend, Squeak. Kari Ann and I even dance together
(“the doggie bump”), even though I am bigger than her and have to be careful
not to knock her down. And I go with Kari Ann to the library, where she teaches
kids to read and do math. I read as much as Clifford!
Kari Ann loves me very much, and I love her. I also love you, because, like me,
you are gentle and smart and can do many wonderful things.
Héro La Lumiére's story was originally published in the November 2007 issue of Baywoof, a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper. Our thanks to Editor
Mindy Toomay! Bay Woof3542 Fruitvale Ave. #352
Cassie Rainbow
Letter to a Service Dog in Heaven
By
Cassie Rainbow, golden retriever
and Kari Ann Owen, service dog “owner” and partner
Dear Beethoven,
I am Kari Ann’s new service dog, a sixty pound red golden retriever. You don’t mind, do you? She still needs help up the steps, and I have learned very quickly to go up and down each step slowly, listening to Kari Ann count in French, memorializing your bi-lingual skill. I know the meaning of “brassez”, and brace her at the top. We have gone to a stage musical, to movies, to work at the riding stable and to medical appointments, and Kari Ann just had a painting exhibited at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.
Kari Ann is miserable without you, and I am trying to help. I do not leave her side, and sleep alongside her bed, and let her silly, fluffy marshmallow of a cat sniff me and rub against me and even kiss me, which makes Kari Ann happy. Sometimes I lick his head, to make her happier. Be honest: how did you put up with this?
Please accept deepest consolation on your horrible and unexpected death from untreatable pneumonia. Kari Ann still will not walk to the part of the huge back yard where you secreted yourself as you were dying, and she cannot speak without crying about how she managed to get you, a one hundred sixty five pound Saint Bernard, down ten concrete steps and into her car. But she does talk about your love of all people, and I try to emulate you every day. She talks about your love of children, and how you were abused by that insane first owner of yours, the meth lab dealer now in prison. I know all about your participation in anti-drug education, and how you and Kari Ann would lead the kids in the San Pablo Library in taking the Beethoven Promise not to use drugs, yelling, “Meth equals death!” “Meth equals death!”
I was born into a loving family and given to Kari Ann by a breeder of golden retrievers, who also donated a very healthy, stubborn and talented Western pony to her nonprofit therapeutic riding program. No one on those twelve acres in Hollister has ever been abused – neither person nor animal nor even flower. If Kari Ann were not easily sick at the stomach, I would vomit every time I hear your life story.
Are you happy in heaven, with Kari Ann’s husband and all her friends and relatives? Please be happy. Please roll in fields of Swiss edelweiss in the shadow of the Alps, and enjoy rescuing angels in avalanches. I believe in God’s mercy, and know there is no meth in heaven.
We are doing all right down here, and I hope that although I am a new service dog, you are proud of me.
It is impossibly difficult to walk in your paw prints, but I must because Kari Ann needs me.
Your friend,
Cassie Rainbow, age three.
Service Dogs: a Different Way
of Walking through the World
Incredible thanks is
owed the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners, http://www.iaadp.org, whose Veterinary
Care Partnership Program has aided all three of my companions over the last
fifteen years; and the Delta Society National Service Dog Center
289 Perimeter Rd. East Renton, WA 98055, Tele: (800) 869-6898.
All three dogs have accompanied me to
sobriety meetings, and Boo Boo Bear and Héro have helped me teach therapeutic
horseback riding by playing a cow during arena games, where the rider, assisted
by volunteers walking alongside the horse, brings the horse alongside the “cow”
and safely edges him into a “pen” made of ground poles in the center of the
arena. Mischa inspired a country western song; Boo Boo Bear invented the Boo Boo Bop while attending the
rising out of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I wish I could have done
what my service dog did: sleep through the mediation.
The issue was horribly abusive behavior at a sobriety group’s New Year's Eve
party on December 31, 2006. The behavior consisted of physical and verbal
intimidation which resulted in my leaving this event. Neither I nor my service
dog Héro did anything to merit such
behavior.
I had contacted the fellowship and Intergroup of which this group is a part immediately
after the event, but did not know until today that my letter had been
considered "crazy" and tossed aside. The man from the fellowship who came to the mediation also said my letter contained no way
to reply to its contents, and that he had probably not noticed the email I had provided, and was in any case "computer
illiterate".
This business manager from the fellowship which hosted the party had not been present, and totally believed the accounts he was given, which were lies. He was told that Héro swished his tail in the food
at the party (I would never have allowed this in a
million years); that the dog was not identified as a
service dog (totally not true; Héro was
wearing his
State of CA medallion/service dog tag); that I
was not
treated abusively or harmfully, which was simply not
true as I was physically and verbally intimidated by
three members.
When I mentioned that I had chest pains following the
incident, the man from the fellowship asked why I went to parties or "stressful" social gatherings at all. It didn't seem to occur to him that I have the right to
go where I want, when I want and to be treated with
decency.
He said I attended meetings at "his" fellowship
"maybe once a year", when he had never met me before.
However, by the end of the mediation, and upon written examination of the Federal law pertaining to service dogs, he suggested that I come to a business meeting at his fellowship where a speaker would be present from the disability community to explain the law.
He even offered an apology for the abuse he had
previously stated did not take place.
And amazingly he committed to spreading information about service dogs and the law to the Intergroup and World Service.
This was an incredible victory for disabled people
with service dogs who choose to attend this group.
I have found more support and sanity in Lifering, and
will not be returning to that fellowship, and probably
not to that group of which it is a part.
One thing that horrified me was this man saying that
his fellowship permitted all kinds of drunkenness, cursing, and tolerated its angry members. He said that it was astonishing that a particular member he identified as having an anger problem had actually apologized to me at a meeting (not the New Year's Eve event) for rudeness and confrontational behavior.
I said that I was very sad that the drunken sobriety group endorses or permits aggression
while it is threatened by vulnerability… for example, a 132 pound disabled
woman with a service dog. This
was a reference to the fact that he and his fellowship
colleagues considered me a threat. I began to believe that the aggression expressed toward me that New Year's Eve might not have had anything to do with my assistance dog, but with aggressive power types having ALREADY felt threatened by the type of person I am... reflective and thoughtful, not conforming to doctrine, mannerly and gentle.
I am especially horrified that the support needs of
vulnerable people in a so-called support group
can be so easily ignored, even jeopardized,
while cruel and aggressive behavior can be permitted.
Apparently, the church whose space was rented by this group for that New Year's Eve party feels the same way I do:they have been barred from church rentals.
