Our service dog Jessie

Jessie

By Kaya Suner

Jessie is my dog.  She is a yellow lab.  They love kids.  Some people call them Labrador retrievers.  There are all kinds of labs – yellow labs, black labs and chocolate labs.  Jessie’s nickname is Calm Canine and sometimes Mutant Mutt.  Jessie loves to swim.  Some people get mixed up with human years and dog years.  In dog years Jessie is three and in human years she is twenty one.  I have had Jessie for about ten months.  We got Jessie in March.

Labs are bred to catch fish in the ocean.   They collect the net with the fish in it and bring it to the boat.  They have webbed feet to swim and can swim very fast.  When Jessie gets out of the water she smells gross.  Well, she always smells gross.  Jessie loves to lick me but sometimes I don’t like it because her breath smells.

Jessie is an assistance dog.  An assistance dog is a dog that helps people.  You have to have a special need to have an assistance dog.  Jessie is from Virginia I don’t know where in Virginia, but we got Jessie at a place called N.E.A.D.S in Mass.  Assistance dogs are more calm than most dogs.  I think Jessie is the most calm dog.  Jessie was trained in prison.

An assistance dog will not bite, claw, bark or chew the sofa apart.  It is hard to have an assistance dog.  You have to let them play every morning and night for 45 minutes, let them go to the bathroom every morning and night, and feed them every morning and night.  Assistance dogs are trained to do a log commands like sit, stay, down, heel and fetch.  Those are only basic commands.

Since Jessie is an assistance dog she can go anywhere, like planes.  She sits right under our feet.  Jessie has to wear a special vest when she goes places with us.  On the plane she has to wear a big puffy vest.

Dan is the name of the guy who gave us Jessie.  We had to do a lot with him.  We  had to go to the mall we had to go to restaurants we had to go to stores and Jessie was there with us.  We also had to do commands with her at N.E.A.D.S before we got to take her home.

It was about a week before we took Jessie home.  It was hard work.  When we took Jessie home we were all excited but she was sniffing the whole house for about two days. Jessie really likes our house. 

When we go to hockey and Jessie comes, she is scared of the buzzer.  Jessie is scared of a lot of things.  She is scared of smoke alarms and fish. 

Jessie can be a loon sometimes.  Jessie loves to play with her friends at the park.  Jessie has played with a pig and a sheep.  Jessie loves to chase me.  I like Jessie a lot.