Badger Belle

Belle, Molly and I went to college today. Belle got to see Molly's new dorm, register for classes, and tour the campus. It was a very busy day with lots of walking interspersed with long periods of long drop. Belle was great.

One of the neatest things we discovered here in Badgerland is that the folks around campus are extremely knowledgeable about service dogs. No one has even so much has asked if they can pet her. They just say, "what a beautiful dog" and then often, remind themselves they can't touch her. It's been kind of cool to see how hard they try to let her do her work.

On the campus tour, Belle was the official door opener. The push pads for the doors are very persnickety. Belle would try to push it with her snout at least twice. If the door didn't open, she'd give the door a look of disgust and then use her paw to do "switch" - sometimes with a little more enthusiasm than the task required. That garnered quite a few laughs from our tour group as we could all see how hard she was trying to get it right in one push.

At one point in the tour, I stopped to purchase water from one of the little kiosks around campus. The clerk dropped a quarter of my change and it rolled away from him, under the counter, and dropped right at Belle's paws. She didn't wait for me to say "get it", she simply picked it up and gently put it in my hand. I looked up to see the best look of wonder on the clerk's face. He looked at me and said, "that is so cool!"

The highlight of all though, was when Belle did a rise for me to hand over my credit card later in the day. I asked the clerk if she was okay with taking it from Belle. She enthusiasticly agreed and so I handed Belle my credit card. She rose up on the counter and handed it over as if she'd been paying for things her whole life.

Oh, dear ... I think I better go check my credit card statement right away.