Training,day eight

I can't believe that Jim and I are already on day eight of our training, and a little more than half way through class. This time in ten days, we will be home together, I think we will be ready to take on the world as a team, and I am excited, though I will miss this place, and the friendships I have made here.
Today was very good over all. This morning, we went into San Francisco, and worked on Chestnut street. We crossed a large street, went to an Apple store, and took a city bus. Jim did great until we encountered a pet dog on a leash in the Apple store. He got completely dog distracted, and I had to do some obedience to get him back under control. Apparently, we let pets into our stores, I didn't know this, but I asked someone who said that as long as they are well behaved, they can be in the store. If they cause a problem for anyone, including my guide dog, we ask them to leave. So, that should be interesting when we get home. I will need to work with him on his dog distractions, but his trainer says he responds well to the gentle leader, and it should be easily fixed. We also discusssed keeping him in a crate in the office sometimes, so thathe has somewhere to take a breather if things get crazy. I will have to figure out all of the logistics when I get home, but I feel that it's all workable, and not a huge cause for concern. I just hope that we don't see to many pets, and that Jim doesn't missbehave when I'm with a customer. For a moment, I had horrible images of me saying something like, "let me tell you about our macbooks," my dog seeing a dog, and me having to completely stop in my tracks and get him back under control, but I don't hink it will happen to much, and if it does, I hope people will understand that we're just fresh out of training and still bonding and learning. I kind of wish we didn't just let pets walk in off the street, but there's not muc I can do about that, and I know that my rteam will give me a heads-up that a dog is around and if I know in advance, I can get things under control. Apart from that, he did really well in the city. Once the dog was out of the way, he seemed to like the Apple store and did a great job at navigating through the crowded aisles and displays. I'm not to worried, I think he should take well to his new environment.
When we were finished at the Apple store, we took a bus which he had no issues with. We ended up at a coffee shop and I had a latte with some classmates and relaxed for a bit.
After lunch, we did our first real indipendent route, called a bus to lounge. Basically, the instructors drop us off a few blocks away from the lounge we work out of when we're in downtown San Rafael, tell us how to get back to it, and designate someone to be the time keeper to make sure that people are spaced out every three minutes. People leave the spot every three minutes and begin working their way back to the lounge indipendently. There are instructors on street corners who step in if something goes really wrong, but the idea is to work the route by yourself. I was the time keeper, so I had my iPhone and made sure that people left every three minutes. I gave everyone a one minute warning, and made sure that people left when they were supposed to. I left last, and so was the last to make it to the lounge, but Jim and I nailed the route! Instructors didn't have to step in once with me. I made nice use of my iPhone's GPS features to check that I was going in the correct direction, and my instructors said that I'd made good use of the resources available to me. My classmates joked around with me and said I was cheating because I'd used a GPS system, they asked me where they could get one and I said, "well, for 199 dollars you can GPS it, too." One asked how he could swipe his credit card, I joked that I'd left the machine at home, and everyone laughed.
After that, we headed back to campus. I took Jim to run in a fenced in grassy area which he loved, talked to my friend, Rebecca on the phone until dinner, and after dinner went to a tribute for retrains run by our class training specialist. The tribute gave us all an opportunity to remember our previus guides, and many funny stories were told. Everyone cried at one point or another, for me, I cried when I talked about my Stoney, how he died, and how much we still miss him. I told the story about how he got the Apple pie of my Mom's counter, and about this time when he tried to bring a couch to show my Mom and her friend when my Mom came to get him.
The best story came from my friend Garry, I asked him, and he said it's OK to share it here. Garry had his first guide, a male yellow lab named Langer, and he was considering dating a woman, though he wasn't really sure about her. The two of them were hanging out at his apartment in Baltimore one day, and Langer was in front of them. Apparently, Langer didn't like the woman much, and he showed his displeasure by peang right in front of her feet, even though Garry had taken him out a few minutes before. Obviously, that relationship didn't last, and Garry decided he didn't like her anyways. Apparently, Langer aproved of Garry's wife, because he lickd her toes under the table the first time they met. That was a light moment in a pretty solumn hour long tribute session, but I'm really glad that we all got the chance to honor our previous guides. Both of mine really deserve it!
After the tribute, I hung out with my classmates Garry and Rebecca and we shared some laughs in the computer room. Rebecca was frustrated that she couldn't get the computers to load her gmail correctly, I tried to help, but had no success (I was reminded why I only use macs when I went through the frustration of trying to get a windows screen reader to do what I needed it to) so Rebecca is going to have her first macbook lesson tmorrow night, because she really neeeds to write an email and can't sign into her account on these computers. I hope I'm able to teach her a little, it will be a challenge with only one laptop, but I'm sure we'll figure it out.
Today, I also found out that Jim was raised in Palo Alto, which is pretty cool because I have friends there. I don't know anything else about his puppy raisers, but I guess I will find out more in the coming week. I was amazed how far away some of the puppy raisers are, one dog in our class comes from Washington State, I think Jim was one of the closest ones to the school in Palo Alto, the rest come from around Sacramento and the central Valley of California, I think. It's really great that there are so many dedicated volunteers who are willing to take these puppies in for a year, they have so much to do with shaping these creatures into the wonderful dogs they are, and I am just so greatful to all of my puppy raisers for the dedication and love they've shown to my guides! Thank you, guys!
Tomorrow, we go into San Francisco again. I am not sure what else is on the schedule, but what ever it is, I need to go to bed so that I can wake up feeling rested and ready to take it on!
As always, thanks for reading!