Me, Ruby and Field Trainer Pat
Me, My Wife Geri, Ruby, Field Trainer Pat
Today was Ruby's and my Certification as a Paws Service Dog Team.
We had to demonstrate on video that we work together to do all the tasks that PAWS trained Ruby to do to help me with my everyday living.
At home, Ruby opens and closes doors, brings me the telephone, turns on lights, picks up dropped objects (a very important task - if you reach down to pick-up a dropped object and you're in a wheelchair, you have a real danger of falling out of the wheelchair and hurting yourself), and brings me my manual wheelchair so that I can transfer from my power wheelchair and plug it in to recharge
In public, she also retrieves dropped objects, pushes pushplates to open power operated entrance doors in malls, etc..
She works with me at Comerica Park, the home of the Detroit Tigers. She goes with me everywhere that I go - a right guaranteed by the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. She is with me at Lodge and Shriners Meetings, shopping, and when I go to rehearsals and performances of several different bands. For one I am a cornet player in the Motor City Brass Band (mcbb.org), and I also play in the Detroit Shriners Brass Band. I am a Past Master in the Masonic Fraternity, a member of Roseville Lodge No. 522 F. & A.M. and a member of the Detroit Shriners Past Masters Unit. Ruby is a part of all that. She even goes to Doctor Appointments and accompanies me to restaurants, and even when I visit friends who are hospitalized
Ruby and I have been together since March 31, 2011 when I brought her home from the PAWS With A Cause school at Wayland, Michigan (near Grand Rapids, Michigan). Even though she was extremely well trained at the school, we had to do Field Training for five months to learn how to work well together as a team. Then the Field Trainer comes back after a Month's absence and does the Certification exam which is what occurred today
