Jackson the Helper Dog

Kathy and I are busy like crazy but the house is coming together nicely. They will put the final stucco on tomorrow (hopefully). The plumber is around today (we may have nicer place to pee once that is complete). The KOA is nice enough but it (the trailer) is a bit small for two adults and a rather largish black dog.
Speaking of Jackson -- he is the star where ever we go. Santa Fe is a very dog friendly town It's amazing how many shops leave out water bowls! But, the big chains are sometimes an issue. Yesterday we were "downtown" and needed to get something at the local REI store. Kathy asked if they allowed dogs because it was way too hot to leave him in the car.

The clerk said, "No, it's company policy unless he's a helper dog. Is he a helper dog?"
Kathy looked at him and said, "Well, he could be."
The guy said, "Might he be a helper dog in training?"
Kathy, "Yes, he might be!"

And so we got him in the door. Once in we slunk along deserted aisles trying to keep a low profile. It was all going rather smoothly until we were checking out at the register. Jack was being held by Kathy in an aisle near the check out but sort of out of visual line of sight of the clerk. Then an extended family with many children descended on Jackson with much squealing and yelling to older sisters and mom. At one point he was surrounded with kids and a five year old with some plastic toy he wanted to buy jumped into the fray, waving the plastic thing up and down about two inches from Jackson's face and Jack didn't even flinch. At that point the grandfather decided he needed to find Jackson's breeder because he'd been looking for a dog like him for seven years so he's asking for Jeannie Walcot's phone number which we are trying to look up on our cell phone. While all of this is going on, Jack is just standing there being petted by six or seven sticky hands and the check out clerk is trying to look the other way and I'm saying to the clerk, "It's all part of the helper dog training -- they need to be able to tolerate children!"

What a circus! So, today's photo is of Jackson, on the bed in the trailer. He loves the trailer because it's so small that we can't keep him off the bed and still have room to move around. Hmmm! I hope this doesn't translate into a newly learned behavior.