Yesterday…

…the house was as tidy as I could make it while still living in it.  (by that I mean that there is quilting stuff all over the dining table and a pile of clothes on the chair in the bedroom, not to mention all the craft stuff in the littlest bedroom!)

All this unusual tidiness is because I was getting a visit from Julie from the Hearing Dogs for Deaf People charity.  I have  mentioned them before – when I was first thinking about it, and when I went to visit them at The Grange.

Anyway – this visit was the next stage of the application process where someone, like Julie, comes to visit me and have a rather long chat about me and my life!  She arrived about 10:30am and left round about 1pm and we chatted about pretty much everything possible when it comes to Hearing Dogs.

She was ever so friendly and put me at ease while we talked – she took plenty of notes!! I can’t actually remember every little snippet of conversation but we covered things like what kind of dog I was hoping for, where I would take it for walks, did I travel on public transport, the fact that I’d have to pay for pet insurance (fair enough), and that Phoebe-cat might have trouble with the dog at first!!  ;-)

The funniest thing to my mind though was that before she left she drew a little plan of the house and even went as far as to ask me what side of the bed I usually slept on!!  Clearly this makes a difference when the dog is trained to jump on the bed or put a paw up to get drag me out of bed.  (by the way – it is that time of year again when I have three different alarm systems going – the shake awake, the lumie, and a timer on the bedside light – not to mention the hungry cat – I really really don’t like dark mornings!!  Or actually I like them too much!! tee hee!)

In any case, this is still just the beginning of the whole process! The next stage is for me to go to The Grange for an overnight visit, probably in the New Year sometime, so that they can assess how I am with dogs in general (also this allows them to see how determined to have a dog people are – I mean – you have to be in order to jump through all those hoops, and besides some people may not realise just how involved having a dog is and so this the time to reassess and change your mind perhaps).  Then…there is a visit at work to get my managers on board and to see where the dog would be working – so it is no short and easy process!