Service Dog Funnies

From Service Dog Training

Service dog use has its ups and downs, but there are also those moments where someone says something and you find yourself rolling on the floor laughing. Often, these comments are the very innocent utterances of small children.

For background, my dog is a Great Pyrenees/Border Collie mix. Basically, he’s a big white shaggy dog with a brown saddle and mask. I was grocery shopping not long after Uno the Beagle won at Westminster. From across the store a small child caught sight of my dog and announced loudly to his mom (and everyone else in the store) “Look, mom! It’s a Beagle!” This one was the best, but I also get a lot of “Lassie!” and “Beethoven!” I’m not up on my kids’ shows, so the Beethoven reference took me a while to figure out. For quite some time I wondered what it was about my dog that made little kids think about a long dead composer.

Another good one occurred in a public restroom. I was in the accessible stall, taking care of business, with Kain lying on the floor. A mother with a small boy, maybe 3 years old, came in after I had already entered my stall. She chose the stall next to mine and set the little boy down on the floor where he was nose-to-nose with my dog. The mom did not see the dog. The little boy looked at Kain for a moment, then turned to his mom:

Boy: Mom, there’s a dog in here!

Mom: No there isn’t.

Boy: Yes there is! He’s looking at me.

Mom: There isn’t a dog in here.

Boy: But Mom! I can see the dog!

Mom: There is no dog in here! Quit making stuff up!

Boy: But Mom!

At this point I nudged Kain to stand up and shake himself, and announced to the mother that there was, in fact, a dog in the restroom. The toilet flushed quickly and the little boy was picked up swiftly as the woman bolted out of the bathroom. Moral of the story? Sometimes you should listen to your kids.

--Tiffany Huggard-Lee 17:58, 11 September 2009 (CDT)