I now have an 8 year old golden retriever lying right outside my living room door. Her name is Leah. She is affectionate, sweet, and currently snoring. I'm taking care of her for a week while her owner is on vacation. The idea is also to see if we want to get a dog. Golden Retrievers and Labradors are of course highly trainable. We had considered the idea of a service dog for Ezra, as they are used more and more for autistic children. We stopped short however at the amount of work training a dog takes, and the alternative of buying a fully trained dog was not financially feasible at $15,000 per dog. Frankly I'd rather buy a horse for that money...a good one. And some fish. Several parents have reported that having a dog helped their child relate more.
I also thought that having a dog would force me to exercise. So far our experiment has proved true on both accounts. Last night I went for a 20 minute walk despite below 0 temperatures, and today with equally chilling weather we went for a one hour walk in the forest with the kids. Running after Leah and throwing sticks for her to catch, motivated the children much more, than just trotting after me. At first Ezra was afraid of the dog. He spent this morning with granny as I had to go to my first day at my new job. It still feels weird that I'm not a working mom. Anyway, when Leah was lying down, Granny got him to get closer and closer to her, until he lay snuggled up next to her. After that, I really could see that his eye contact started increasing during the day. During our walk he even held a hand on Leah's back and ran along side her for 10 minutes. Tonight after dinner he wanted her to come play outside with him. These are all spontaneous interactions. Another plus I didn't consider is that Micah likes having a buddy to hug and play with. He loves animals and gets a very soft cute voice when he talks to them.
Minuses? I don't like having my hands smell like dog, the hair gets everywhere, and I'm not a huge fan of the begging for food.
you forgot about cleaning up poop! maybe that doesn't bother you though.
ReplyDeleteit's good that Ezra took a liking to the dog... maybe that would be a good thing for both the kids.
this new job - is it the horse magazine thing? do you do that on location some where or at home?
see ya later, m
Yes. I haven't gotten to the picking up poop part. That is she pooped so far out in the woods that I didn't want to beat down underbrush just to go pick it up.
ReplyDeleteIt's mainly from home thing when the kids are in bed, but until I get the hang of the program I'll go into the office twice a week in the morning.