"My Best Day Ever!"

Well it has been a full day of working and training, it is 9:00pm and the night should be winding down, but as I look over at Glacier lying on the couch I realize he still has to have his bath for his therapy session tomorrow. I walk over to him, he wags his big tail and I say, “Let's go take a bath!” He is up and we are headed towards our 3 hour ordeal of shampooing, drying, brushing, teeth cleaning and nail dremeling. We both climb in bed at midnight, I can’t hardly wait for tomorrow!

It is now morning, some last minute touches then I grab Glacier’s Delta vest and suddenly he springs to life! I say, “You want to go see the kids?” He is barking now, tail no longer wagging but instead making huge circular motions, his eyes are shining and they are almost as large as quarters! We load up and we are off.

As we entered the facility, I saw three children and I was told that they were the ones that Glacier was to interact with. The children were there for counseling, each one of them had been abused. Glacier headed to the children as fast as he could possibly go! All three children loved Glacier right away! Two of the children really watched him and had a lot of questions about him. The third child had questions and wanted to touch him and play! He wanted to know what tricks Glacier could do. I showed him how to use hand signals and verbal cues to make Glacier sit, down and rollover. Rollover was his favorite, he asked Glacier to do this about 5 times. Glacier was very willing, his eyes were shining and his tail was wagging! The other children watched and laughed at Glacier's antics!

The child asked him to crawl, toss a cookie off his nose, show him his tummy, pick a playing card, and then he asked to walk him, which we did together. With all of the fun we almost forgot where we were. However, someone stepped out of another office and called the children one at a time to come and speak with them. I saw the faces sadden and carefully off they went. I decided to stay and wait for them to come out. I thought maybe we could end their session with a little more play and they could leave on a much more positive note. Eventually they came out, two of the children got sidetracked and had to do other things, but the third child came out ready to play with Glacier again and Glacier seemed to be waiting for him too. We played a little longer, then suddenly Glacier laid down on the floor and the child laid down with him, using Glacier's side as a big pillow. They looked like a giant ”T”. As we were resting, the child said that he might like to be a dog trainer one day. I laughed and told him how good he had been with Glacier and told him to keep practicing with his little dog and if he wanted to, he could be a dog trainer! Suddenly, it was time for him to go, he got up with a big smile on his face, shook my hand and turned to Glacier and gave him a very large hug and said, “Glacier, this was my best day ever!” I was shocked and as he left tears came to my eyes and I thanked God for this most precious gift of a dog that could help a child who had to explain some terrible incident that had happened in his life to a stranger, yet Glacier made it his best day ever.

Not all of my dogs are therapy dogs but each one of them has made me feel like spending time with them has been “my best day ever" or "best moment ever". They are wonderful social animals that should not be neglected or left in a backyard. Take the time to train your dogs, play with them and be affectionate with them, and you might be surprised what you get in return!

Banjo and Penny

Moose

Katie and Glacier

Katie

Dodger and Katie