Back to this weekend though. I left Friday after work. After 3 1/2 hours on the bus and a 10 minute cab ride, I was there. Finally <3
After letting him know I was downstairs waiting for him, He came and greeted me with Illi, his service dog in tow. This girl is too funny. She is a 75 lb golden retriever, and she things that she is a lap dog. When she sees someone that she knows, she is all over them like white on rice. This includes me now LOL. Well, we get up to his apartment and Illi wasn't having it that he and I wanted to cuddle and kiss. She kept jumping up on both of us, licking us and squeaking. Finally she settled down a little, we had some us time, and then went out into the living room to watch TV. Well, while we were watching TV Illi decided to have some fun with my fleece coat and ate a huge hole in the middle of it. I'm not sure if this is out of excitement that she does this to my sweaters and hoodies, or out of jealousy. But, it's the second time she's done this now. Oh well, could be worse I guess.
I said right away on Saturday though that I wanted to do this blog post. Because even though we went to the State Fair together and he had Illi with him, Saturday was really the first time that we had been out together since we started dating. Of course, Illi came with us. She was well behaved as usual, but it was really eye opening what it's like to be out with a service dog. We took the bus to a large local mall. I was on the bus with them before, and Illi was well behaved. Saturday though, she just couldn't get herself in a good position. She was trying really hard to get herself into a small spot, but she just couldn't get herself in there. So, she ended up laying in the middle of an aisle. Not exactly the ideal spot for a 75 lb dog. I ultimately needed to take her and hold her over by me to get her out of the way. I didn't mind doing this, and she didn't mind, but in a way I felt like I was overstepping my boundaries because she is his Service Dog. But, it worked out in the end.
While in the mall, you would have honestly thought that Illi was on display. I didn't fully mind really. Of course kids are going to see a dog and freak out and squeal about seeing a "doggy" or "puppy". What got to me though, were all the people that kept pointing out Illi. Both to their kids and to other adults. Yes, it's a dog. Please don't keep acting like you have never seen a dog before. You see her attached to LegalQuad's chair, you see her red vest with patches, because people kept making comments about her being a service dogs. And honestly, by the end of the day I was really frustrated and really wanted to yell at people about it. Because I don't know if it's just a lack of knowledge or straight ignorance for the fact that she is a working dog. I did hear some parents educating their children, telling them that they aren't supposed to touch the doggy because it's working and helping. Those are the people I love to hear. Because it's so important for people to be educated on service dogs. Even while we were out to dinner, a server (who wasn't ours) kept coming around and commenting on Illi. It was really that that set me off. Because everyone else in the restaurant was great. They moved a second chair even so that Illi had extra room to lay under the table out of the way. I was really impressed with how the restaurant handled Illi. Luckily, we did't run into any access problems. Just with the public that doesn't know the proper etiquette for people with service dogs.
I don't know if people in the regular "disability world" consider public speaking about disabilities as "disability porn" like I hear and read in Dev/PWD forums, but I would never object to Legalquad doing this someday. And maybe it's because I work with students with disabilities, and even though they have different disabilities than LQ does, I still see the way so many of them look at my aunt, who is a teacher in the same building, who has been in a wheelchair since she was 15, and they just have a different level of respect for her. Truthfully, I really do believe that LQ has so much to offer knowledge wise, and educating people is the best way to change the way that people treat persons with disabilities. I have digressed here. But it may be another post somewhere down the line.
Illi is a very lucky dog. She is well loved, well taken care of, and quite the princess. She is also a very hard working dog, and does her tasks well. I know that I am thankful for her, and she's not even mine :)
Miss Thing herself.
My man and his girl.
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