In Case of Emergency...

Right, blogging regularly, because that’s a thing that’s totally been happening…

Pardon my moment of sheepish teenspeak. It’s been a crazy summer and I have just purchased a few minutes alone with no other immediate responsibilities by getting up much earlier than I really need to for the second session in my women’s self-defense class. No, Greta does not accompany me to that. I brought her with me to watch a class session before I joined; I wanted to observe the teacher’s style and some of the content ahead of time. Greta, however, began lunging and barking as soon as she saw the first arm-bar. It seems she interpreted the class as very aggressive play – at least that is how I interpreted her behaviour. That was about a month after I brought her from TSE and hadn’t even begun to learn about her personality. So, Greta is not a dojo dog. She stays home in her crate and sleeps until I return, then she runs circles around the bedroom in her enthusiasm to have me back. It is strange, but fun, having a dog with that much youthful energy again!

So a lot has happened in the last three months, and I won’t try to cover it all in one blog entry. Frankly, I hardly know where to begin. I am torn between describing our participation in the Birmingham airport disaster drill and writing about Greta’s stress behaviour development and how TSE helped me handle it like I’d been training dogs my whole life. I think the latter will require more than one entry, though, and I have pictures of the former, so we’ll start with that.

According to federal mandate, every airport has to conduct a disaster readiness drill at least every three years. Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport took the order and ran with it; they got the whole community involved. They invite members of the community to come in to the airport on the day of the drill and volunteer as “victims” of a plane crash who need to be ‘rescued’ and triaged so that the EMTs and firemen and police get more realistic practice than they could on slashed-up charred dummies.

I heard about the event from one of my housemates, and in the end both girls and I decided to go down, and to bring Greta. I wanted to give her the chance to experience fire trucks and hazard suits up close so that in case of a real emergency she would be far less likely to panic – even though she’s a shepherd, and they have a reputation for being superheroes. J  I also thought it would be a good idea to allow the EMS to practice handling a service dog in an emergency. Of course, that meant I had to know how to do that, first, so I could educate them, so I called up the ever-helpful and all-knowing (at least about doggies) experts at TSE and asked “if you had the chance to tell EMS what to do with a service dog in an emergency situation, what would you tell them?” The trainer with whom I spoke got very excited when he heard about the drill; I believe he is going to do some research and find airports local to Morristown, NJ that outsource their victimology so that trainers and puppies-in-training can volunteer and spread the experience around.

The night before the drill we all piled into my housemate’s car and drove down to Birmingham to stay with her parents overnight, who graciously offered to let us stay with them and restrain their anti-social dog to avoid conflicts with great. I admit to being worried about this dog because she tried to attack my housemate’s dog, Bailey, when they visited, but everyone worked very hard to make sure that Greta and the other dog never knew the other was there and the experience was much less stressful than I thought it would be. Thanks, everyone, for your help! As I have mentioned before, one third (about 600) working teams will be attacked by stray dogs within the span of their partnership, and a dog attack can be both physically and psychologically crippling to a working dog, often ending the dog’s career prematurely, so I am extremely grateful for everyone’s consideration of my concerns and Greta’s safety.

The next morning we got up way too early. We had to be at the airport by 0600 for a provided breakfast and a makeup job. The application of fake wounds was assigned to local beauty school students, who got the chance to practice stage makeup in exchange for making the drill that much more realistic. I acquired a couple of severe burns and blood streaming out of my ears to indicate blunt force trauma to the head. Each victim was also given a card with vital signs, levels of consciousness, and descriptions of the wounds in case they came off or were not clear, as well as a patient number to help the evaluators track what was done for each victim. No, Greta did not get any fake wounds. Imagine trying to get latex paint and fake blood out of her coat! She also disapproved strongly of the taste of my latex burns and conveniently chose not to lick them off. Dogs have a long and annoying history of trying to remove makeup, lotion, sunscreen, and other skin-coating substances. I never thought I would find one that tasted bad enough to discourage the propensity!

After a briefing, during which we were encouraged to play up our injuries to the best of our acting abilities, we all piled onto a pair of tour buses and headed out to a tarmac that had been closed to main airport operations for this event. We spread out over the field like we had just crawled away from a burning wreckage – played by a retired school bus and a small plane carcass fused and fueled for a slow-burning practice fire. I put Greta’s gentle leader on, thinking the event would be loud and chaotic and stressful, and any time something dramatic happened (like the sudden approach of loud sirens or the appearance of Martians – I mean guys in hazmat suits) I produced a treat to distract and calm her. I wanted the experience to be educational for both her and the EMS personnel, not traumatic. Greta is much more food-motivated than Prada was; the treat scam worked beautifully.

The fire was lit in the fuel-filled bus, and a slow, creeping stem of black smoke grew into the bright August sky. Firetrucks approached, accompanied by ambulances, and politely silenced their sirens as they drew near. A trickle of suited firemen and uniformed EMTS and airport police disembarked and set about rooting out the fire and establishing a command tent. Behind me, the “victim” designated “psychotic” began running about howling to anyone who would listen that he’d brought the plane down. He was quite convincing, and many of the other volunteer victims forgot to scream and cry for help because we were laughing. His performance was brilliant; he ran up to the cameraman from the local news channel, screeching his heinous accomplishment right into the camera. The cameraman grinned and gestured urgently for him to run off to the command tent and repeat his performance. What followed was an amusing and predictable flag-football intercept and fake tackle by no fewer than five airport police. Really, he was the most convincing of all of us, and I salute his exertions in the incredible heat! Greta found him interesting for about half a second, then returned to nosing after my hand with the treat in it.

Prada had been very attuned to my emotional state, and I can be a convincing actress when I need to. I’d upset her considerably many times during acting classes at UAH, and she was sensitive enough to tell that when I got thrown or tackled in karate or jujitsu matches I was having fun and did not need rescuing or consoling. Greta, however, had only been with me for a couple of months, was much younger, and I didn’t know how sensitive she would be. So after studying the symptoms listed on my card, I decided I had sufficient injuries to put me into shock, a condition that would allow me to project a certain amount of detached calm which would not alarm Greta. She sat comfortably on my lap, her sharp elbow digging into my thigh, for the half hour it took the EMS to arrive and disperse amongst us.

Here is where you get to find out what TSE said when I asked them what they’d like EMS to do with service dogs in a disaster.

1)                  Keep the harness on so that it is obvious the dog is not a pet and ought to be given higher priority

2)                  If the dog is with the handler, and the handler is communicative, keep the dog with the handler at all costs

3)                  If the handler is not responsive, check the handler’s phone for In Case of Emergency contacts and notes for information about a spouse, vet, or other appropriate guardian for the dog. DO NOT give the dog to local animal services!

4)                  If the dog is separated from the handler, check its tags for identification to connect it with its handler again. Keep it with the human victims so as to reunite it with its handler as soon as possible.

Now, these instructions put a bit of responsibility on the handler, too. My phone includes a note informing EMS that there ought to be a German shepherd with me, and where to look in my contacts for an appropriate guardian. Greta’s tags include my phone number so we can be reconnected if we get separated. I have both my vet and emergency vet numbers saved in contacts. These precautions are rather like a mother teaching her child to recite her phone number, and having her pediatrician and a godfather or godmother on speed dial in her phone. While she hopes to never have to use them, these steps give her comfort that in case of emergency, everyone knows what to do and can find the information they need.

So, when the EMS came to assess my condition I told them, in my best calm but dazed voice, that I was all right, that my service dog was all right, and that I thought I’d heard someone screaming over that way (pointing vaguely where there wasn’t anyone, of course). The EMTs decided I was “walking wounded” and helped me to my feet. Here my performance became Broadway quality. After sitting with Greta’s elbow dug into my thigh for half an hour, I produced the most convincing stagger imaginable – because my leg was numb from toe to hip! I nearly fell over on top of Greta, who looked mildly offended but unconcerned. She did slow her pace, though, because the numb leg was the one nearest her, and she was very patient with the EMT attached to my arm holding me up, which she no doubt considered to be merely another human mooching off her guiding prowess. We were escorted to a triage area, then put into an ambulance and told our part of the drill was done. After each person had been triaged and sorted, we all piled back onto the bus, went back to the airport conference room, and washed off our wounds before enjoying the catred lunch.

I have no expertise with which to judge the EMS’ performance. All I will say to that is that the fire was put out and every victim made it back to the airport. Greta remained calm and largely uninterested in the whole affair, though, and did not seem bothered by the inhuman-looking hazmat suits, which really had been my main concern. Dogs’ sense of sight is not their strongest, so they have difficulty identifying animals of various types by sight alone, and a suit like that does not smell like a human. Uniforms and helmets and the like have a long history of frightening dogs because they cannot determine what sort of enormous animal walks on two legs and does not smell alive. So, given our experience this year, I do look forward to participating with an older, more mature Greta in another three years. By then I hope to know whether or not she will be bothered by a more dramatic victim performance from me, because I did miss getting into character a little.

I hope to write again sometime this week, but as I am still a little behind on homework and I am preparing for National Novel Writing Month (November) it might be a little while before I get to discuss Greta’s stress behaviours and how TSE helped me handle them. On that subject I will say, for now, that working with Greta is a beautiful experience, and I could not ask for a more responsive, focused guide, and her work improves almost every time we go out.

P.S. Yes, I took a break from writing this; the self-defense class was yesterday morning but this entry took a bit longer to compose and arrange than I anticipated so it got set on the back burner until this morning.