He was my favourite instantly, Ozzie. I still couldn’t tell you why, exactly. In a way, all the puppies we worked with over the spring and summer were my favourite, each one with its own way of being a boisterous, lovey, clever little imp. But Ozzie really was my favourite. Maybe it can happen with dogs too, where you just know you’re going to be great friends before you’ve even said hello. “He’s sensitive,” Kieran said the first time he brought him home, plopping him down on the grass. And he is. He watches you with a slight crinkle across his forehead. He likes to curl up in your lap, coiling himself into a perfect circle.

But he’s also a goof.

He snores. He groans contentedly or like a grumpy old man, depending. He’s big on wet-nosed snorgles.

So when PADS was desperately short on puppy raisers in the fall, it was a bit of a no-brainer. So now we’re full-time volunteers. It’s a big job, turning a goofball puppy into an assistance dog. We’re learning constantly, all three of us.

When we first started with PADS, I thought the puppy raisers were maybe a little…intense about their charges. I mean, some of them were talking about keeping their puppy’s baby teeth (I don’t/won’t do that). But now, I get it. Your dog is with you everywhere you go, every day. You become symbiotic in a way, checking in with each other as you move through crowds, his head is on your knee every morning on the train, he’s curled against your feet at your desk, his breath rising and falling and filling the silence. You see him master a command and you’re so proud because you did this, you figured it out together. Your puppy is going to help somebody—it’s happening! And then you realize that maybe you’re talking about the dog too much. Maybe it’s weird.

But then, people are curious. Suddenly people talk to you on the bus, the train, in the streets. Your co-workers linger in your office, finally asking if they can pet the dog in the same shy, eager voice kids use when they want a Popsicle and know it’s a long shot. “I know he’s working, but he’s so cute.” Everyone says that.

PADS clients talk about how people finally see them once they’re with their dog. But this has proven to be true for us too, in a way. People see Ozzie padding along earnestly beside me and they catch my eye and smile. It’s a nicer way to move through the city, sharing conspiratorial grins.

It’ll be hard to let him go in the spring. Hurt-your-heart hard. But if he goes on to help someone have a better life, it’ll be worth it.

So! [claps hands] Moving on! I mentioned in January wanting to find a rewarding new volunteer opportunity, preferably something to do with puppies, as part of my New Year’s resolution to have fun. Well, guess what!

Enter PADS, an organization that trains assistance dogs: service dogs for people with disabilities, hearing dogs for the hard of hearing, and therapy dogs. And, after attending Puppy School for a couple of months, Kieran and I qualified to become Puppy Sitters. Oh, you heard me! Puppy! Sitters!

Here’s how it works: PADS hand picks puppies that they think will make great service dogs (mostly labs, which in addition to being especially roly poly and adorable, are very well suited to being service dogs), and these puppies are placed into Early Puppyhood Education (EPE) (I’m not making this up). Five days a week, the puppies are in school, learning commands and patience and obedience. Don’t worry about the puppies in school being lonely or unloved, though! Not only do they get to wrassle and play with their adorable schoolmates often, they get tons of love from their handlers. They also have volunteer Puppy Cuddlers who come in to snuggle and play with the puppies twice a day, which helps to socialize the pups in addition to letting them feel loved. And, yes, you can volunteer to be a PUPPY CUDDLER (there is a waiting list, though, AS YOU CAN IMAGINE).

Anyway! On the weekends, the puppies are relinquished into the care of the team of Puppy Sitters, who take the puppies into their homes and carry on the EPE training (this is why we had to go to Puppy School, to learn all the commands and how the whole thing works), while also giving the puppies more socialization opportunities. In addition to getting used to the quirks of your particular home (be it kids, stairs, elevators, other dogs or, oh say, three cats), the puppies get to come with you everywhere you go during the weekend. The pups have little assistance dog capes that allow them to come with you on the bus, to restaurants and stores, concerts, you name it. So, in short, you know how you see assistance dogs getting on a train during rush hour like it’s no big thing? We get to teach the dogs how to do that!

I iz antiquing!

Now, I’ll tell you what: It’s heart-burstingly fun. We take a pup about every other weekend, and there have been a few times where they’ve needed an extra hand and we’ve volunteered during the week and pups have gone with Kieran to his work (this is another thing the puppies need to learn — how to behave in an office!). So, every other weekend, we fall in love with a new puppy, and each puppy has his or her own little big personality and challenges, and hot damn if I don’t end up learning from them in the course of teaching them how to navigate the world. There was Paris, who very much wanted to chase the cats, but who also wagged her tail so hard every time you entered the room that she basically took her whole body with it. There’s something very…warm and giggly and silly feeling when you leave a room for five minutes and here’s this puppy so happy you’re back! “It’s you! I like you! Hello!” I would like to remember to at least grin at folks when I’m happy to see them.

Watching. Cats. Intently. Must. Not. Chase.

And then there was London, who was so very patient and serious, but who also was cunning enough to case the joint and then wait until you were indisposed to take all the mischievous opportunities she had filed away for safekeeping. And that is how she ate DIRTY CAT LITTER as I watched helplessly and dry heaved into the phone while making a doctor’s appointment. London got to meet our nephews and treated us to a huge display of PUPPY EXUBERANCE when she and my five-year old nephew played a game of tag. London had the endearing habit of doing this, to check on you, before she groaned and flopped on the floor by your feet.

I iz checkun on you

She also had a sweet habit of always maintaining some kind of physical contact with you — usually a chin or a paw across your foot — while she was sitting on the floor by your feet on the bus or ferry.

And then there was our little Presley girl. We had her for a week, the first week after she was weaned. Our roly poly little downy rascal. We loved her. How could you not? She would be naughty and rambunctious and then she would whimper and curl up in your lap for snuggles before her nap. She was still too little to go down stairs by herself, so we had to carry her, which was my favourite — her round puppy belly pressed into my arm and her wet puppy nose snorgling my neck.

I iz growin’ lotz, soz I’z sweepin.

I iz assistance dog at the office! Wurkin’.

It’s a lot of work — a surprising amount of work — and it takes a great deal of discipline on both the part of the dog and the handler to stick to the program. I’m often physically exhausted after a weekend with the puppies, but I’m also…inspired and nourished and…full-up. The dogs are so eager to learn and to please and in the end the work they will do is so important.

And then there’s always this, and once again it’s incredible to me that we’re the ones technically doing them a favour (turn volume up for maximum cuteness):

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12126276&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Presley at Work from Kieran Kennedy on Vimeo.

Pay attention now, dear readers, because I am about to outline for you the steps for finding—at long last—viable, sustainable, not soul-eating, full-time employment. To recap:

• Begin by working in The Worst Place Ever™. No. Not EVER. Surely that title is held by a terrible meat-processing facility that employs illegals or a Gap factory in China that employs small children. So, no, not EVER. But work in a place where PEOPLE THROW THINGS. AT EACH OTHER. Where people administer the silent treatment at random. Where people make OPENLY RACIST COMMENTS and when you speak up and say that you’re offended, said people will visit your cubicle on a daily basis to refresh their comments. Just so you don’t forget that they’re justified in their racism. Where people are in dire need of meds, as evidenced by the fact that they wash their hands so often their skin cracks and bleeds. Which is weird, yes, but relatively harmless until Crazy Compulsive Coworker begins to follow you to the bathroom to begin a shrill harassment campaign focused on the fact that you only wash your hands ONCE instead of THREE TIMES, THREE TIMES, youhavetowashyourhandsTHREETIMES.
• Crack.
• Go on sabbatical.
• Discover that, after sabbatical, you’re still not ready to face an office enviroment [THREE TIMES! THREE TIMES! THREE TIMES!]. Freelance.
• Remember that the key to freelancing is to pile on so many projects that you establish enough forward momentum to render moot the fact that people rarely pay freelancers on time. [Ed note: I'm still waiting for my cheques. Plural. AHEM.]
• Oh hai! Rent is still paid monthly.
• Begin eleventy-month loooooooooong job search that makes you and your spouse seriously question whether moving to Vancouver was a huge mistake. (High cost of living! Low salaries! Low salaries FOR WHICH YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO BE ELIGIBLE!)
• Become paralyzed with anxiety. Throw yourself on the hamster wheel of existential panic. What are you doing with your life? Why are you an editor anyway? Maybe you should just be a temp/flailing freelancer forever. Do you really need mental stimulation? A livable salary? Pride?
• Use this barrage of questions to dig yourself into a nice, deep rut. Wallow for a bit in your rut before realizing that you’re getting a little too comfortable in Feeling Sorry For Yourself Land. Unfortunately, the only way out appears to be on the Bitter Angry Expressway (after taking a hard left on Panic Boulevard).
• Unless, of course, you simply admit the truth. Out loud. Sit your whiny ass down right in the middle of Panic Boulevard and declare yourself in a rut. A rut that you’ve gone and dug by your own stupid self. And you DON’T KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT BETTER. Maybe even cry a little. In front of people.
• Find yourself pleasantly surprised by the outpouring of support you receive, including a nice email from your mom that reminds you that you have a mom who says mom things, even when you’re 32. Wonder why you didn’t say anything sooner. (Note to self: Hey, Dumb-Dumb! In the future if you want people to support your feelings, TRY EXPRESSING THEM FIRST.)
• Heartened, declare yourself out of your rut despite any concrete evidence to the contrary.
• Promptly receive job offer for groovy, full-time, salaried position. (Of note: This job offer includes a week’s paid vacation to go home and see your family for Thanksgiving BEFORE you’ve completed your FIRST WEEK OF WORK.)
• Go into the office where you’ve been temping the last couple of months and, in the hours before the rest of the staff come in, crank Aretha Franklin and dance in the darkened hallways while doing the mail run. In two hours you get to…
• Announce to your boss that you’ve gotten a job in your field and have arranged to have the temp agency send over another phone jockey. Effective immediately.