Bon jour!! After a day of trying to read and decipher french on the computer, I have finally figured out how to translate it to English!!
Ryan and I are having a wonderful time in Montreal! Our plane rides were great, I managed to navigate the Atlanta airport (praise the Lord!) and we are rapidly becoming accustomed to our temporary home. The people at Mira are wonderful!! They have been so nice and really worked hard at making us feel welcomed. They all are french Canadian, so there is a bit of a language barrier, however we seem to work through it fine.
Ryan has been working with orientation and mobility specialist today so they can assess what skills he has and any he may need to work on. I was able to have lunch with him earlier and he seems to think he did well.
Tomorrow he will work with several different dogs. They will pair him with the one that he works best with and he will receive his dog on Wednesday! (sniff,sniff!) For two weeks after that, my time with Ryan will be very limited. In an effort to creat a bond between Ryan and his dog and eliminate any confusion about who the master is, I have to be out of the picture! That is going to be hard but I intend on doing a lot of spying behind trees and calling on the phone.
A little about Mira; this place is AMAZING!! It is a large campus with 6 or 7 buildings. Two of the buildings are kennels; one for aspiring guide dogs being tested to see if they qualify for the program, and another for the ones that made it. There is also a building that is dedicated solely for the purpose of training these dogs for use by autistic children. I met the psychologist for this program, Noel, today and I was very impressed. He explained to me that 20 years of research has gone into this program but they have only fairly recently begun to pair dogs and children for this purpose.
I have taken pictures of the dogs, they are beautiful, by the way, and as soon as I figure out how to download them, I will post. Also, as soon as I know the name of Ryan`s dog and get a picture, I will post.
Keisha
I didn't realize that you would be apart from Ryan during this time? Will he still be staying with you at night? Do they have classes planned for you while Ryan is training without you or are you just on your own?
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ReplyDeleteJen, Ryan is not staying with me at all. He is staying in a building not far from mine, however. No classes for me; I am pretty much on my own and bonding with the people who work here! I have gotten to go into some of the neighboring towns which are beautiful. I can't drive yet so Joanne, the director of Mira, took me on a tour. One of the parents here have a car and we are planning a trip to Montreal tomorrow.
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