January: New Year, Same Pandemic

 Total Hours: 6

Jan Hours: 6

    This semester started out the ground running with our endo/repro pharm module. It was a challenging but engaging module for me, and definitely had me thinking outside the box in order to understand the pathways. It also was an exciting time, because I got my second vaccine the first week of classes. Being at the point where I have most likely reached full immunity, I am so grateful to get to witness this cutting edge of science and be a part of it. We are now in our neuro pharm module, which is followed by the psych pharm module. I am most excited about these two modules, as I was a neuroscience major in undergrad and psychopharmacology was my favorite class I took at Tulane. Thankfully, school did not keep me too busy to not do service hours this month. On a very frigid Monday, I took my roommate's service dog to work on public access while running the farmer's market with one of my classmates, Mary Neil. We supported the Hager's house, a shelter for women and children. The women can make candles, herbal teas, and other fun things to sell at this market, and the profit we make is returned to them. We had a very successful day, running out of most of our candles. It was really exciting to get back into the community. Seamus also behaved well and helped us with candle sales.

    For my next four hours, I went to the headquarters of United States Veterans Service dogs (USVSD) in Marrero. I worked with their professional trainer to train and work with the 6 dogs that they have in professional training. Professional training is the last step of an organization service dog before they go with their person. It is where they shape up obedience issues, refine commands they learned with their puppy raisers, and learn tasks that will mitigate the disabilities of their graduate. I worked with the dogs on force fetch, so that they will consistently pick up items for their handlers, even if they do not want to, and block boards which teach the dogs to block or cover for their graduate. Then, we went to Lowe's and worked on their public access and doing commands and tasks in public. It is extremely important for a dog to focus on the handler in public, and not be distracted by external stimuli. The dog needs to be able to task when needed, and alert dogs can miss important alerts when distracted. I am excited to go back and work with them more. 

With Seamus and Mary Neil at the Farmer's Market

training with Zazu

training with Zazu, working on eye contact

working with Zuma on eye contact

working on go in with Touro

go in with Zuma

doing let's go with dogs teaches proper positioning for eye contact and being ready to complete any tasks a graduate needs when on the go 

It is important for service dogs to be inconspicuous in order to help their graduate. Having a dog tuck under the legs ensure the dog is out of the way from getting tripped over or distracted