E129: 브렌다 윅스(Brenda Weeks) - "블로거이자 서비스 도그인 버피"

I guess at what point did kind of the dogs come into that? Were you interested in dogs before you started getting sick? Or was it really kind of that first service dog? Or can you tell me a little about that? When I was 10 years old, my parents moved around a lot while I was growing up. And when I was 10, we had just recently moved to a new town. And it was always in the middle of the school year. And I was incredibly shy. And I befriended a dog that belonged to our neighbor. And he had been abused and was very fearful of men. And the owner didn't really like him very much and offered him to me. And I begged my parents for them to let me have him. And my dad said, you have a month to see if you can get him to settle down so that he wouldn't panic every time my dad just, like, said something or moved. And then moved. There was a local dog club that had obedience classes. And they were on Sunday afternoons. And the beginner one was from 1 to 2. And from 2 to 3, they had an advanced class. And from 3 to 4, they had the open and utility class. And my parents would drop me off at 1. And then I would do the beginner class and then sit and watch the other classes and go home and teach him everything I saw there. So I did the beginner stuff and the advanced stuff right from the very beginning. I loved the training. He was a fabulous first dog to do anything with because he was so fearful. And I had to really be creative with my training because back then it was very forceful type methods. And I couldn't use those at all with him. So I learned a tremendous amount. And I had been going. I went to the advanced class for a few sessions. And the club was having an obedience match. And I asked my obedience instructor what class they're going because I had no idea. And he said, go ahead and try another say. And I went in another say. And I got my 99.5 out of 200. Wow. Highest scoring dog. Highest scoring junior handler. And I was hooked. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. You got addicted early. An American and Canadian. Yeah. I put an American Canadian CD on him. And he was all ready for open. And I went to a match on a Sunday and showed him an opening. He got 198 and highest scoring dog. And the next day our house burned and we lost him in the fire. And I was offered like many different dogs. And I chose a golden retriever puppy. And she went on to get her utility and tracking degree here in the States and in Canada and in Bermuda. And she was the first golden to get her American Canadian Bermuda CD or UDT. So that was my start in dogs. Well, that's sad.

But, I mean, that's also quite a splash to make early on in your sports career. Yes. Yeah. So I had that in my background. And then, like, over the years I had done a lot of confirmation showing. I had golden retrievers with my breed that I did. I had a champion and she produced a champion. And very active in doing the dog sports and the showing and confirmation up until I got into the wheelchair. And thought my dog show days were over. But they weren't. Well, I'm certainly glad they're not. Yes, me too. I know that you kind of mentioned recently on the blog that you knew pretty kind of soon after the wheelchair came in the picture that the service dog was near future. You just didn't know kind of exactly when. What was that process like? Kind of to find a service dog. And maybe you could just share a little about kind of the impact that first dog really had on your daily life. Okay. Back in the early 80s, I worked at a guide dog school in New York. I went to the apprenticeship program and was a certified trainer instructor. And we would train the dogs and then go into class with the blind students to match the dog with the person. And over the years of giving that gift of independence to so many people, I saw the impact that a dog could have on a person's life and the independence that a dog could give a person with a disability. And back then, the service dogs were fairly early in the infancy of them being trained for people with physical disabilities. And I had read a lot about it just because I was interested in that whole area of the dog world because of working at the guide dog school. And so when I was in on rehab, I said to my husband, I'm getting a service dog. I mean, it just wasn't any question to it. I just knew I was going to because I knew the independence that a dog would give me. And I had planned on applying at Canine Companions for independence back then. And it was one of the very few schools that were training dogs for people with physical disabilities. And at the time, my husband and I had been doing therapy dog work. And we had started the therapy dog program at the hospital. And a lady that was doing it with us had a litter of lab puppies. And I had come home from the hospital and was home maybe a month or so. And she brought the litter over and they scattered in every direction except for one puppy came over and laid under the edge of my wheelchair. And she picked her up and said, I would like to give her to you to train as your service dog. And I said, no, I'm going to go through school. And we were just overwhelmed by life in general at that point.

And just knew that we couldn't give to a puppy what it would need to be raised to be a good working dog. And so she took the puppy home and she said, I'll just hold on to her for a while. And I said, well, if you have a home for it, you know, don't because I don't know what's going to happen. And a few months later, I had another hospitalization. And I came home from the hospital and I called her and said, do you still have Savannah? And she brought her over and she stayed. Don and I trained her. She worked as my service dog for 11 years and was almost 15 when she died. And just the impact she had on me in so many different areas of my life. Just the independence that she gave me, the companionship, the icebreaker connection to the community. When you're out, you know, people will come up and I'm going to interact much quicker if you have a dog with you than just being in a wheelchair. And so that connection to the community was like huge. I felt included instead of excluded. And I did a little bit of training with her. People aren't going to come up and say, oh, what a nice wheelchair very easily. But if there is a dog or something there as the icebreaker, then it starts the conversation. And then just leads to that feeling of being included or part of the community. You were saying something about you did some training with her on what? I did some training with her and was hoping to try showing her an obedience. But early on in the MS, I had a lot going on and I would get so that I thought I would be ready. And then something else health wise would hit me and it would just set me back. And so I never had the opportunity to show her. She was trained for all the novice stuff and some of the open stuff. But I never got to any shows with her, which was a little disappointing. But she did many other things in my life. So it wasn't meant to be right then to do that. So when she was getting ready to retire, I applied again, or I applied at Canine Companions to get a service dog because I health wise wasn't in a good spot where I thought that I would be able to train another. And to find a service dog prospect isn't always easy. And I was right at the top of the list, just about ready for them to call. And a breeder friend that had a litter of flat coated retrievers offered me a puppy. And again, I resisted. And Don said, sure, we can do it. We did it before. So she came on X. She came and lived with us. She was eight weeks old when I got her. And she learned all the service dog skills and was a tremendous help at home. But she didn't have the right temperament to be a service dog.

I tried for a long time. And she just, she could do the work, but she didn't really enjoy it. And it wasn't fair to put her in that setting that she didn't really enjoy. But what she did do and the reason that I think that she was in my life was that I was able to show her in confirmation. And I finished her championship. I showed her in 10 shows. And she won in six out of the 10 and got three majors. And it was just thrilling to be able to show again and to do it from the chair. It was, the winning was fun, but the, just being back in the ring and showing was the best part. And I put a Rowling Obis title on her in Canine Good Citizen. And she passed her temperament test. So that was when I got back into showing after being in the chair. And I, again, applied to Canine Companions and was on the waiting list for two and a half years. And I got the call to go. And that was when Buffy came into my life. So the book and your blog kind of share Buffy's story, right? So can you share a little bit of that story with us? You know, kind of. Sure. Yep. Yeah. She was, the way that the organization works, this one, they're all somewhat different. But they, the puppies are born out in California. And then they're flown to different parts of the country to their puppy raiser. And Buffy lived with her puppy raisers in New Jersey for 18 months. And they taught her, like her foundation skills. And she was living, growing up and living in a house and going out in public and learning all those beginning parts of what was going to lead her to be a service dog. And then she went to the school on Long Island. And that's the closest campus to us. And she went through nine months. And she went through nine months of advanced training. And when I got the call to go down, my son, Eric, took me for the two-week team training. And the first couple days, we worked with several different dogs. And on the third day, they matched each of the students in the class that I was in with their dog that they thought would be the one that they would go home with. And for the remainder of the team training, we worked together and came home, graduated and came home two weeks later. And she's been with you since, huh? Yep, she has. It's been six and a half years. Wow. What does a typical day in her life look like? What is that like for her? When we're home, I take her call to Mish and Vesta. So she's just like a regular dog. She's not on duty all the time, but she's always available if I need her. Anytime I go in the kitchen to do anything, she's right there to help.

Or if I go like in the other room or if I drop something, she hears it and rushes right there to pick it up. But mostly she just hangs out fairly nearby. I don't tell her she has to stay in a certain spot or she has the run of the house. We have a couple pet dogs and she can play with them or interact and just relax and be a regular dog. Her biggest jobs that she does for me with limited use of my hands and arms, I tend to drop things a lot. So she gets lots of practice on picking up a variety of items off the floor. I have ropes or tugs attached to the drawers and the cupboards and the refrigerator in the kitchen. And she'll open and close all of them for me as I need her to. And when we're out places, she'll push automatic door buttons. A regular door, if it has a lever handle, there's a rope that I can attach and she'll open those for me. She does a lot of different things. How much work do you have to put in kind of on maintaining those service-related behaviors? What does that look like? The ones that I use often, like dropping things and opening and closing the doors and stuff, just the regular day-to-day things that happen is practice enough for those. The ones that I don't use is often that I make an effort to practice them so that she's really sharp in knowing them. It would be like any type of training. If you don't maintain it, then they kind of slip or get sloppy with it. And so I just, if I'm at the microwave and making, waiting for water to boil and a teacup or something like that, the couple minutes that it's heating, then I'll do like have or go underneath the cutout area or put her feet up on the counter to deliver something up there. Just different things that I don't normally use on a day-to-day basis. I try to find those little times, like five minutes here and there to practice them. I try to make a list because it would be easy to just practice the things that we know that are easy all the time and forget about those that are a little more challenging. We were going to talk a little bit about how you got into performance dog sports. Can you share a little bit about kind of what you're doing today, what sports you're currently training and competing in? Yeah, I did the, I never can remember the name of it, the sign-up sport, I think it is. The rally, the first year after I was home, I showed her in novice at that at one weekend of shows and we finished her rally novice title for that and then didn't do much competing for a while until just recently. In April, I had the opportunity to go to an AKC show and it was kind of special.

The town that I had first started with my first dog was where the show was held and it was like almost exactly 50 years from when I first started and I got to show Buffy at that show and she, I showed her in rally novice and beginner novice and she qualified in both. So she has one leg toward both of those. And next month in September, in September, I have her entered in another show to try to see if we can qualify again for her second legs in both of those. That's what we're working on right now. Yeah, congrats on the first couple legs. That's awesome and good luck in the upcoming trial. Thank you. You'll have to let us know how it goes. Yeah, you will. You know, you're kind of forced to be a pretty good problem solver and a creative trainer when you're working on competition behaviors from a wheelchair. I'd imagine there are things you have to adapt or change. Can you talk about that a little bit? Are there examples of how you've had to adapt things or train maybe a little bit differently for your sport and, you know, how that has impacted kind of things with you and Buffy? The wheelchair that I have right now, I've had for about a year, and it's mid-wheel drive. And what that means is the turning radius is, like, very small because the center wheel is what it turns on. And it has smaller wheels on the front and back. So that has solved a huge amount of problems that I had previously because, like, my turns in the obedience ring or doing some of the different signs for rally have a much smaller turning rate. So it's made it much easier to do that. With my previous chair, it was a front-wheel drive, and it just turned so differently. And I had to make sure I had plenty of room to get the turns in. And some were, like, more challenging because they didn't look exactly like they should have looked because of the way that the chair turned. So I'm much happier with this chair because I feel like I can do the signs and the turns the way that they really should be done. So that's been the biggest thing is just the turning radius and to be able to perform. Some of the rally signs are Buffy's had to learn to, like, adapt with the way she moves. Like, if I have to make a left turn in place, that's one of the ones in rally that you do. So I give her, like, a little bit of a pre-cure, almost like a heads up that we're going to be going that way because she has to step back and move out so that the chair doesn't hit her. So just finding ways to let her know what's going to be coming so that she's prepared, so that she's in the right spot and isn't getting hit. Mm-hmm.

That seems like that would have taken some forethought on your part to just kind of think about, okay, this is the behavior I'm going to do. Extra behavior you have to train and maintain and, you know, keep performance ready so that you can do that. Yeah. I did a lot of practicing, and I still will go out just by myself in the chair and practice, like, how to make the turns so that, like, I have exactly in my mind when and how to turn so that it's fair to Buffy that she is consistent on the way that I move. So I practiced without her before anything new I tried to practice. And very early on, I said to myself, the chair isn't going to be an excuse of why I can't do something. I'll find a way to make it work and do what everybody else is going to do because that's, to me, that was the only fair way to be able to compete was if I could do everything that I should be doing. That's a good point to kind of transition a little bit here because I want to switch gears for a minute. And I kind of mentioned in the intro that you recently published a book, and we haven't talked about that a whole lot yet. So can you share just a little bit about the book? When did it come out and what it's about? Yep. It is a children's book. It's about service dogs and about Buffy and her growing up with her destiny of becoming a service dog in our early years of being together as partners. And when I was first in the chair, I had been a teacher's aide at my son's school, and Eric was seven, and he was in second grade, and I had been teacher's aide in first grade for two years. And all of a sudden, I went in the hospital, and then I wasn't at the school. And I think the kids were really mindful of what had happened and heard their parents talk and just didn't know what was going on. The school wasn't accessible, so I couldn't get in right away so that they could see me. And kids being kids, they teased Eric terribly about his mom being in a wheelchair. And I think a lot of it was just their fear of the unknown, of what had happened and what it meant to be in a wheelchair. And probably some of them had never seen somebody use a wheelchair. And so when I could finally get into the school, I talked to the kids and just let them ask questions and find a way to feel comfortable. And it was the beginning of many years of doing disability awareness in the school system. And very early on, my dream was to write a children's book about service dogs and people with disabilities to just help people learn or to help the kids learn about people being different and that they were still the same person.

They just did things differently. And so it just was a long-time dream of one that I thought would never come true. What led to it actually coming out now? How did it all come together and come to be? Well, back when Ferretpalooza happened, the very first Fenzie camp, I was able to go. Some friends took me and that was just a life-changing experience. And one of the biggest highlights of the whole weekend was meeting Denise. And we were talking and she was in the process of writing Brito's book. And I jokingly said, well, when you finish Brito's book, you can write Bussie's book. And never thought any more about it. And after Brito's book came out and I read it, I sent her a message and I told her how much I loved it and that she had to write a sequel to it because I didn't want it to end. And she said, I'm not writing a sequel. What about Bussie's book? And that was how we started with that. She and I worked together on writing it. And the writing part was done very early on. And there was a whole epic getting the illustrations done. A few bumps in the road with that. But that finally came together and it was published the middle of July. That's awesome. I want to end this kind of the same way I usually end every episode of The New Guest. So I've got three questions I usually ask at the end. The first one here, what's the dog-related accomplishment that you're proudest of? And you told me in advance that you want to give me three, so that's fine. Yep. I tried really hard to just come up with one bouncer, my golden that got the American-Canadian Bermuda UDT. That was just very special. I did. She had almost all of her obedience degrees completed before I was finished with high school. So I did almost all of it as a junior handler. And she had several highest-scoring dogs in all three countries and many, many highest-scoring junior handlers. And just the beginning start of a lifetime of being involved with dogs. Just a very special dog and very special direction that my life went because of having Clancy the first, the Sheltie, and then Bouncer. So that's one. My next one is Onyx, just because the courage that it took to step outside of my comfort zone to go into the ring in the wheelchair. And just being able to show her from my chair and do so well. And the people that it touched while I was doing it, I had several people that came up to me and said, because you've done this, then I'm going to go in the ring despite my limitations. And just the fact that I was able to help some people was very special, too.

And then the third is when I got Onyx, that was my beginning introduction to clicker training through Her Breeder. And I kind of dabbled in it with her, but didn't really know what I was doing. And when I came home with Buffy and started very early on with the FENSE school and the classes, I have done everything with Buffy through positive reinforcement. And just the learning process and the ability to let go of some of my past training things and be able to do it all with her that way. Just makes me feel like I worked really hard to get to that point. That's awesome. My second hard question here at the end. What's the best piece of training advice that you've ever heard? Well, this was very early on. I think it was probably my first or second FENSE class. It was with Denise and it was in Healing Games. And I don't know if somebody had asked the question or she was making an observation with one of the dogs in the class. But she said, not all dogs are the bouncy driven type. You cannot change a dog's basic thrive structure. You can only maximize what is there. And Buffy is very laid back and she's got a real strong work ethic, but she's very methodical in what she does. And watching the other dogs in the class, I was thinking, you know, Buffy's never going to be able to do any of this stuff because she's not doing like the excitement and the bouncing and the jumping around. Like a lot of the dogs are playing. And when I read that that Denise wrote, it just made me stop and think she's the dog she is. And I just work within what she has to give me and make the most of it. And then I put it onto myself as well that I have limitations and that's okay because that's me and I can do anything I want to do. Just work within what's there for me too. So it just, it was kind of a double, not really training advice, but just made an impact on my life and future for the training that Buffy and I were going to do together. That no matter what, we would be able to work together and do the best we could do. I love that. Well, from both perspectives, that it's a really nice takeaway to have from a class like that. My last question, Brenda, is just who is somebody else in the dog world that you look up to? So Denise, just the impact that she's had on so many people's lives through creating the training school and the impact that she's had on my life as far as just the opportunities that have opened up through the training and being able to take the classes. And the book was never would have happened if it wasn't for her. And I just admire her so much.

And she's just special, special person that has done so much for so many people. She's so kind and generous and giving and just an awesome person. I'm sure that she will be very honored to hear that. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Brenda. You have such an incredible story. I really appreciate you being willing to share it. Thank you so much for asking me. It was such an honor to talk with you and for you to ask me. Just touch me deeply that you would even want me to come on and share my story. So thank you. Aw. And for folks who want to follow up, learn a little bit more about the book, read some of the awesome blog posts that Brenda is putting together. The website is bloggerdogbuffy.com. You can go check it out and see some of what they are up to. And we will be back next week, guys. We'll be back with Michael Shikashio to talk about the Muzzle Up Project and his upcoming webinar for FDSA on close encounters of the unwanted kind. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice. They have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in. And happy training.