Hello,

Today my mom, myself and Sunny completed the first of three steps to complete Therapy Dog certification for Sunny. You have to do three visits with a Therapy Dogs Inc. official tester to become a therapy dog. Two of them have to be in a medical building and the other not. We will do the third at the library in Pinecrest.

The Palace was where we went today. It is an assisted living facility here in Miami. We went with a big group of people and their dogs, probably 20 of each. We met outside and the dogs and people got to meet before we lined up, Sunny was first in line, to go inside.

We visited several rooms where people were waiting for us. The first room was a room that had many Alzheimer’s patients. My mom started crying a bit. She said that she was thinking of my dad’s dad when he was in the same type of place. I saw her and started to cry a little bit too but then I remembered what my mom had told me before we went there. She told me that sometimes the people have trouble speaking, seeing, moving their arms and maybe even not know where there are even if you tell them. But that is was part of the disease and not much could be done about it and we should just talk to the people and have a nice time. Then when I thought about all that I felt better and did not cry any more.

Sunny was sort of nervous and my mom and I had to encourage her to come close to the people. It was her first time so we went extra slow. There were many wheel chairs, walkers and canes and those can sometimes be dangerous to a dog’s tail or feet. My mom had to put her foot in front of some of the wheels of the walkers and hold on to some of the wheel chairs to keep them from running over Sunny. Sunny jumped in a chair so that one lady could pet her easier. I think it was hard for some people to reach her when they were sitting in their wheel chairs.

We met one man who used to be a mailman. He told us funny stories about when he was delivering the mail. He thought Sunny was so great. I thought he was great. There was another woman who was really nice. She told us stories about the dogs she owned when she was younger. They were all really nice.

We spent an hour and a half there and will go again in two weeks. The people were really nice and so happy to see the dogs. There were so many kinds of dogs. One was from one of the classes we took at the place we go to with Sunny and Klaus. I did not get any pictures because we were not sure we were allowed but will ask next time.

Sunny passed this section of the test with flying colors. The test giver even wrote in the papers that she, my mother and myself were a great team and that Sunny was a wonderful dog and made for this kind of work. I felt pretty good about all the work we do with Sunny, it is a nice feeling to have to make someone else happy.