So, last Saturday, Music and I went to our monthly jail (pet therapy)
visit. It's a pretty new program, and what we talk about is sort of
an evolving thing and depends at least in part on who shows up
inmate-wise. Women volunteers can't visit male inmates unless they're
accompanied by a male volunteer, and there's only one male volunteer
in the program so far, so I had only visited women before last
Saturday. I've been going with Diane, who is a friend as well as a
board member and Auction Queen for our rescue group, but her mother
died of cancer last week and she was obviously unavailable Saturday.
I met Ed, the lone male volunteer, at the jail; he's 75, is a
long-time collie and Sheltie man and was accompanied by his 7 year-old
rescue rough collie, Beau. Beau stuck his nose where dogs do and
Music did the same, and I was relieved to see that Music appeared to
harbor no breed prejudice as a result of meeting Fawkes the weekend
before.

This facility is a typical county jail and houses mostly inmates
serving time for misdemeanors. There are sometimes inmates who are
either awaiting trial or awaiting transfer to a prison for violent
crimes, but we don't see them. The inmates are grouped by low
security (green outfits) and high security (orange outfits) and I
don't know what criteria is used to classify them. We do a separate
session with each group. There were no women interested in
seeing/petting/hearing about rescue dogs last Saturday, and since we
had the option of visiting women or men, we opted to meet with men.
At the first session, we took the dogs off leash and Music started
wandering around the conference room. His timing was perfect; Ed was
just explaining that you can't train a dog to herd. I noted that you
can't train a dog not to herd, either, and that as we spoke Beau was
doing a nice herding demonstration with Music. Beau apparently felt
that Music should stay closer to Ed and me, and was doing his best to
get him back to us. He was pretty laid-back about it, no nipping or
vocalizing or anything, just kept coming up behind him and kind or
urging him forward. Music was completely confused - not particularly
bothered or annoyed, just "what? What am I doing? What do you want?"
I'm sure I found the whole thing a lot more interesting than the
inmates did, but there you go.

We spent quite a bit of time with the first group of 3 men - must have
been close to an hour, because we ran up to lunch time and had to wait
half an hour to see the second group. I've always been impressed at
how different types of therapy work really tire out the dogs, and they
were less interactive during the second session (I'm sure it had
nothing to do with the fact that all the treats Ed brought had been
handed out by the first group). Music collapsed on his mat and one of
the inmates sat next to him most of the time. The jail would never
send us inmates who might hurt the dogs, but naturally I keep a very
close eye on how Music reacts to everything - the automatic doors are
very noisy and even those make him start a bit - the Late Great Zeke
had an experience at a nursing home years ago that unnerved him and
that kind of thing can ruin a therapy dog. Anyway, Music and his
buddy were fine. Beau wandered around the room a little and kept
coming up and standing next to Music on his mat and they'd sniff each
other. Music puts up with the butthead brothers standing over him at
home but wasn't bothered by Beau, at least not that I could see. I
was pretty happy about this, because I'd like to do more visits with
Ed.

The other really cool thing is that Ed said he never brushes Beau,
just has him groomed about every two months. I was under the
impression that rough collies need to be brushed pretty regularly or
they will mat, because when they shed the hair doesn't fall out. Ed
said Beau does shed in clumps but that he rarely matted, maybe
occasionally behind the ears. He said Beau's grooming requirements
were not unusual for a rough collie. Since I dream about a biddable
dog with a built-in recall and collies have always been on my (long)
want list, I was excited. Anybody want to rain on my parade and tell
me the truth: that Ed's off base?

Mustang Sally