Hello all my readers;
Those of you that follow my
facebook
twitter
and
audioboo
will know that there were problems cropping up with my beloved guidedog cleveland, and it wasn’t getting better.
I tried everything short of screaming, gentle leader, strictly back to basics, etc.
His focus wasn’t there, and it got to a point where he started pulling really hard in harness to greet people, and I couldn’t keep his focus from outing to outing.
I called guidedogs for the blind February 19, 2013 and basically said I need help, I don’t know what to do, I’m absolutely stuck.
I tried reaching someone the day prior, but do to some holiday or another the office was closed.
I reached my FSR and we talked, including my mentioning maybe a possible reevaluation, and he said, OK, I can be up March 11, 2013 and we’ll see what we can do. Ok, *breathe* no need to panic, you can keep things rolling until someone can come up and see you. Later that day I received a second call from graduate services, and we talked more, and they indicate we can’t wait, we need to get cleveland back for reevaluation. So we put things in motion, and fast forward about a week.
Cleveland is picked up by a field manager from origon, and returns to campus.
I return to using a cane, *gasp* wait, can I still use the cane? Actually, I can!
I’m told I’ll get weekly updates, etc. At this point, it hits me like bricks, I lose it, what could I have done, and one of the guidedog lists I’m on bares the brunt of my ramblings, could I have done more, was I too hasty in returning him. The support from that point onward was absolutely amazing, the calls, the e-mails, just everything, all you on that list, you know who you are, you absolutely rock, thank you so very much.
Fast forward.
We get to the first weekly update. It’s not good, and the person passing along the update knows this. Everything I’ve reported, there seing it, including some things I missed or that didn’t start until his return. They have had no lluck fixing it. Nobody’s giving up yet, though, let’s give it another week, I’ll call you next week.
I hope, prey, and continue hoping, but in the back of my mind I have to prepare myself for that call that says he can’t continue working.
Fast forward to March 15, 2013.
The phone rings, I grab it.
It’s the person delivering reports on cleveland.
It’s been determined that Cleveland cannot continue working as my guide, they can’t refocus him, they need to retire him from active guide work.
I’m told the next steps, what happens now, and the call is ended.
From that point onward it’s been an immotional time for me, why did I even bother, I should have just bared the brunt of it, keeping cleveland working, etc. A couple of people who immediately stepped up after his retirement was announced, I’d like to give special thanks to, you know who you are, because of your experience with dogs, and immediately not asking any questions, called me or in person kept me going, I thank you so very much. Everyone here in Toronto, back in Ottawa, the guidedogs counselling department, other graduates, all of you have continued to support me and I do sincerely thank you.
There has been the question of will I return to GDB, or will I recommend them in the future?
If you’d asked me that last week, my answer would absolutely not be fit for this blog, I blamed them, I blamed me, I blamed cleveland’s raisers, I was hardist on myself for giving up on him.
But now? Me personally? I honestly think as a new handler, and this is just my personal opinion, so please remember this. I think the two weeks is a good idea, in theory, and maybe if I’d done more research, I could have known the questions to ask, but the two weeks as a new firsttime never seen walked with a guidedog in my life, handler? sort of two much. Would I do it again? If I got a call right now from them saying we have a dog for you, I’d seriously have to ask myself if I could do two weeks. With what I know now? I probably would. I’d know the questions to ask, what to look for, who’s ear to ramble off.
Recommend it to others? It all depended on your individual situation. Blankitly, I would, but as an alumni member of GDB, I’d have to ask you individually questions and give you a recommendation at that point.
Will I get another dog? It’s in my future deffinitly, but where I might aquire the dog from will take a lot of consideration, thought, and talking to a lot of people, and making my choice from there.
If you’ve read this far, thank you.
In closing, thank you to guidedogs for still supporting me and taking my questions, my concerns, and thank you to those that took the brunt of my argumentative behavior when I wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. Thank you to both of Cleveland’s puppy raisers, names omitted unless they comment here on this post, for raising such an amazing dog, even if he had to retire early. Your dedication to him is boundless, and I thank you from both of us. To the person that has taken him in in his retirement, thank you for loving cleveland like I loved him in his working life. Once again, thank you, each and everyone of you reading this weather it’s by e-mail, rss, facebook, on twitter, etc. Thank you all for your support.
Talk to you all next time.
personal life
unimpressed, that's the nicest way this can be put
Please note, this is in no way against just eat, absolutely and utterly not, they’ve been the rock in this whole fiasco and there just as in sensed as we are.
Over the past nearly 2 years I’ve taken a distinct pleasure in being lazy, and just forget cooking on certain nights, and hitting up
just eat
hammering in the postal code for wherever I happen to be, sorry Americans no go for you, picking a restaurant, ordering what I want, paying via credit card or interac online, and in about 45 minutes, voila, food.
Fast forward to tonight.
We’ve got a couple of kids, and 4 adults to feed, so who wants to cook for 5 people on a Saturday, if your answer was absolutely not us? You’d be correct! Tell them what they’ve won, Johnny!
OK, never mind that.
So we hit up just eat, banter around some ideas, finally make a choice, punch in the order, have a small argument with interac online because it liked to throw 500 errors, won the battle, tells us the order’s gonna be there at 20 to eight.
Ok, whatever. sit, spin, who cares.
order delivery time comes and goes. OK, maybe someone got lost. Ring up just eat. They call the restaurant, driver got lost, here, have $10 off your order we’ll be there in 5 minutes.
Five minutes comes and goes, so does ten. so does fifteen. we head for I think it had to be half an hour. Hey, look who’s here, the delivery driver!
I answer the door; this guy barely says two words to us. he hands me the drinks, I hand it to
this person over here
and turn around, and the guy’s already shoving the pizza at me. Instead of handing them to me one at a time, first the medium, then the extra-large, he shoves the extra-large at me, with the medium on top about to fall off.
OK, get them out of the way.
Then the driver wants me to sign the debit receipt. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, sign the debit receipt.
OK, I didn’t know what it was at first, so I ask him what it was I was signing, he never tells me.
I sign it, because at this point, I’m internally like, I want you out of the doorway and off this property.
please note I only find out that it’s the debit receipt I signed during subsequent conversations with just eat.
My first reaction is to call the restaurant and outright beat them over the head with their rude behavior. But take 30 seconds and breathe, then decide, let’s do this the right way, contact just eat.
SO I hit up there live chat system, explain the entire situation, please note I got the same rep I got on the phone, so he goes and rings up the restaurant to find out what in the name of all things squeaky and fuzzy’s going on.
They can’t tell him anything because they want to talk to the driver.
Ok, whatever, I know how this is gonna go down because I’ve been here before when I dealt with delivery places before directly, and I tell the just eat chat rep this straight up. You know they’re gonna deny it, the customers blind, so they’re gonna deny deny deny deny anything was wrong. Also during this chat, I said that I felt $10 off the order wasn’t enough for the now larger issue and that a complete refund was in order.
He says can I call you in 45 minutes. I need to talk to the restaurant about this, etc. Sure, I’ll go eat, you call me.
While you’re eating, I’m gonna put this complaint to my supervisor and account manager that is the head of our company.
Fast forward about an hour, 20 to ten or so.
He rings up, and of course I’m write, again. Restaurant says there wasn’t anything wrong, they weren’t going to issue a refund, he was polite, yada yada, I call complete bull. sorry, 4 adults say you’re in the wrong, now, let’s go.
Ok, I was more polite then that, but believe me, even just eat knows there getting tossed around.
so after that call, I end up finding the e-mail from the rep. Names of employees are removed for privacy reasons.
This restaurant delivered this order almost an hour past the delivery time, the owner said it would be there within about 5 minutes when it was 30 minutes past the delivery time. The customer came into chat about 20-30 minutes afterwards and the order had still not been delivered. The owner told me again it would be there within a few minutes and offered 10 dollars off. The order was for small children and the main customer who the account is under is blind. The delivery driver came with the delivery about an hour past the delivery time and was rude to the customer, asking him to sign the receipt for a debit order which I assume confused the customer and shoving the food into his hands before he could pass it to other people helping carry the food. There were multiple other people there as well including the customers girlfriend who can potentially confirm this. I spoke with the staff and owner there regarding this and they were unwilling to do more, stating that their delivery guy was the nicest one they ever had and there was no way he would act like that. The owner called in later and was combative, threatening to leave Just Eat and asking for my full name and seeing if I had an employee code, saying he’s been in this business forever and knew more. This will need to be resolved fairly quickly as all the parties involved are quite upset.
Thanks,
Let me just say this, if I were just eat, amato’s would be dumped so fast and I’d be refunding the customer in question completely and telling the restaurant that these are the consequences.
I’m not them, so that’s not how it rolls.
I can dream, can’t I?
lol.
Later on, a Just Eat rep calls me back and tells me they talked to more of their staff, and there upset over this issue, and they want to give me another $10 in credit to use against any future order from just eat as a thank you for my patience and an apology they can’t resolve this until Monday.
They send me the $10 credit.
SO as a bit of a thank you I send this.
I’d like to take this opurtunity to thank all involved with this situation for working with myself to bring this to a satisfactory resolution and to hopefully get a full refund of the order in question.
I understand your just an intermediate company, but that’s no reason for this restaurant to treat your company, or your company’s customers like they’ve done tonight.
Amato’s treatment tonight of myself, and the rest in this household, is in no way a reflection of just eat or it’s employees.
Your willingness to keep in constant contact regarding this issue as it heads for a resolution speaks volumes for the level of customer service you want to see from both your own employees, and the restaurants you promote and serve.
If anyone has further questions, I can be reached using the information below my name.
Thank you for your time and attention.
We’ll see how this turns out, and I’ll post another entry when I know more.
Of course, the comments section is always available for you to give your opinion. Were we in the right to be pushing this as far as we are? Or are we all completely off our rockers. Let’s hear your thoughts.
See you next time.
everything explodes, and doesn't take customers with it. and other unrelated things.
I no how to blog? apparently, I do.
If your smart, you’ll have noticed that thing that your reading and some of it’s associated services, hey
zoe?
you actually no how to update? miracles! Wait, I can’t actually talk because I’ve been lazy about updating this thing, more on the how and why in list form later in this entry.
As you might have read
over here
that over there in that corner of the server moved, to.
our domains are still barried on the same server, just not on the
same servers that our paying people hang out on
and it saves $$$ in the long run, and allows for a little more *smash* to happen without taking the customer base with it.
This also means if the customer server goes *smash* the customers can still yell at us and tell us it’s broken. Hey, ladies and gents, we already knew, we knew long before you, now shut up so we can fix it, k? lol.
A couple of services like
this one
shit the bed nicely during an unrelated change, more on that later, and I kinda didn’t find it until this morning. Yeah, shut up, I know I’m on a roll.
Let’s see, what else.
- move into temporary residence is complete, and I finally got around to running the keys back to the old rental office, damn you life, stop fucking me up.
- apparently my computer dealer is a moron and doesn’t believe I know what I’m talking about when I know the damn system board’s on it’s way out. any of my female readers wanna use a pair of high heals and step on his nuts, please?
- we welcome
May
to her own little corner of the web and to
wordpress
thank you for not using
blogger
our sanity thanks you - my next convert
does live on blogger
but I’m working to fix that, but need to wait until she’s back from
the san rafael campus of guidedogs for the blind
to complete that transition. - it’s nifty to see 8MS pingtimes to the iweb box, and a solid 15 to the server where this blog lives. go bell fibe, go!
- school starts soon, so that just might break my blogging sprea. oops.
- I’m playing games like
imperium novanow - certain people need to understand a specific 4 letter word has more meaning than you think and to stop acting like a whore, no I’m not providing context, to bad.
- an unlocked iphone is in my future.
I think that covers the high points and random spueage of my brain.
Talk soon.
putting an issue to rest.
since apparently my facebook and twitter’s been full of it lately have the following information in list form. and this is my final word on this topic, so read, absorb, and then shut your faces.
- yes: I am moving in with
May - no, I am not dating her.
- no, I am in fact not trying to get between her and
James even if I am living with her. - your continued badgering all involved on this topic may end up having you tossed on your behind, perminantly.
no further discussion will be entertained on this topic.
Thank you.
a month home with cleveland.
It’s been a month since I was a member of graduating class OR227 of guidedogs for the blind, Oregon campus and returned home with my knew guidedog, a yellow labrador golden cross Cleveland.
It’s been a month of adjustment for not only myself and for cleveland, but for those I associate with professionally and personally.
It’s been a learning experience for some, an adjustment for others, and a learning experience for us as a team, as well.
Has it been a perfict month? No, it most certainly has not.
It’s been rot with issues, trials, tribulations and it’s fair share of oh my god he still does work!
It’s also been full of knew experiences, and relizations of hey, wait, I don’t have to watch for that pole anymore, as well as figuring out the best way to teach cleveland specific things I need him to target/watch for.
It’s just the beginning of the relationship, and I don’t know why I didn’t completely follow through with this years ago.
Thanks to the staff of GDB, cleveland’s puppy raisers, my community here at home, and the community of GDB alumni and to the members of GDB related lists I’m on, as well as you, the faithful blog reader for being there, and for partaking in this new adventure I’m on.
It’s the outpouring of support from the organization that makes me continue to know that GDB was the best choice for me when it came time to get a dog.
A reminder, Guide dogs for the blind is a non proffet organization, supported entirely by donations.
It receives no federal, state, or munniciple funding to operate both campuses.
Your support would be appreciated.
To donate, or for more information on GDB and it’s mission, please visit
there website.
Thank you for reading, and have a great day.
an update on cleveland, and I'm still alive.
Hey all;
If you have me on
facebook
you would have seen a pile of pictures being uploaded. if not, go check it out.
We’re meshing well, and things are coming together, with a few issues along the road, but you’ll have that.
The post graduation podcast, I’m still waiting for the DVD from GDB, so I can get htings together, but it is coming, just wait.
That’s it from here.
Later all.
I'm alive
Alive, yes. Sane, uh…Not really. Brain’s still trying to do wonderful things. This morning I lost a chunk of time and forgot where the hell I was and thank Christ I wasn’t on a train when it happened. Then, to boot, I almost passed out in stats class. The almost passin’ out was sorta kinda my fault though as I wasn’t being very nice to my body, I admit. I hadn’t eaten anything between the hours of 3 PM yesterday and…we’ll call it… 5:15 pm tonight. Part of that was because I was still unamused/unhappy/panicky, part of it was a genuine lack of time and lack of wanting my shit to disappear off the university campus if I left it hiding somewhere and walked away. Just my luck, my shit would pull a shane’s shit in late January and pull a disappearing act if I left it somewhere. And it wouldn’t just be my tech, it would’ve been my clothes and shower thingies and the rest. So yes I forfeited lunch to watch my stuff.
Yeah that would’ve been a great call to make, “Uh, yeah, I’m on campus, my shit’s missing.”
Hey, at least I came home and my mother didn’t threaten to institutionalize me or something. I was waitin’ for that when I made the call to my cousin who works across the street from the college, “Yo, come get me.”
Totaly expected her to walk in the door and clock out on the nearest flip-a-shit-ometer. I expected to be stuffed in the local psych unit strapped down and hooked to an IV by now, no lie. Everyone remained calm, no flip-a-shit-ometers were overclocked or broken in the process, my cousin had an escape plan for me if it got to the point where I needed out right the fuck now. He told me straight. “if you need to get out of there, you text me. I’ve seen what your mother can do to your brain, it’s not good. You look like you’ve already had several brain meltdowns today.”
My dad didn’t flip out, but it was my mother’s reaction that ok, shocked the shit outa me. My mother hugged me and actually cried. Standard-issue wiseass me probably would’ve said something along the lines of, “Who are you and what’d you do with MotherZilla?”
Nobody flipped a shit, probably because they were warned that I’d flipped several recently and probably would’ve volluntarily committed myself if anyone else, including me, flipped their shit again. Shit’s still up in the air, I’m trying not to panic anymore because then I really will have to be hospitalized, and I’d really, really rather not, thank you. I mean, I get it that Murphy hates me, but this shit’s gotta stop somewhere, seriously. I shouldn’t wake up in the morning and immediately start thinking I don’t deserve to breathe. On that note, I know it’s before 9 PM, but methinks it’s time to punk out and go curl up with my kid. Unless she’s still mad at me for hanging out with my friend’s dog, well, then, don’t know what to tell her. 😛
If I had a dick, and today were a person, I'd force said person to suck it.
1. Shane’s on a bus heading back to Ottawa.
2. I’m emotionally fucking wiped right out.
3. As a result of the above, I’m ready to stuff my foot up the ass of the next person who anoys me.
4. For the love of whatever may or may not be holy, please don’t let it be one of you.
5. Packing in a holy fuck hurry results in you not nowing where in the hell half your shit is. don’t try it at… well…no, you won’t try it at home.
6. If something doesn’t go right soon, I’m gonna snap and probably end up in the hospital getting downers by IV until they can find something they don’t have to shoot me up with that won’t make me a spaceshot.
7. Related: Murphy, back the fuck off or I’m gonna die and go wherever you are just for the sole purpose of kickin’ your ass, then I’ll reincarnate as a cat. (Preferably a spoiled and well-love one like mine.)
8. The visuals I could provide you with if Shane doesn’t get a work visa for the states could curl your toes, make your eyes water and essentially make you cry like a little girl and run away.
9. Also, a note to whatever cabbie drove me to a friend’s place for the night, I can shut the door myself thank you, there’s really no need to shut it on me, no, really, I promise. You’re quite lucky you missed and didn’t nail me in the rib cage because I would’ve called your manager and he and I would’ve had a conversation.
In summary, now that I’ve been sitting here spewing brain vomit all over the place, I feel somewhat kinda sorta more human. Now, let’s not have anything else turn into a royal fucking clusterfuck please and thank you? Good thing flip-a-shit-ometers are not actually physical devices, I’d’ve had to replace about 10 over the last week.
I wouldn't be putting this out here if we didn't need the help.
Anyone in MA, any floorspace? We’ll take it, this is my last ditch effort to save the rest of the trip and try to save myself from being tossed out on the street. Anyone who wants to help, you have our direct contact methods, if you don’t, you can get them. Anything’s better than a cardboard box, we’ll take whatever we’re offered and be fine with it. We will offer you gas money, but anything’s better than $500 in ticket change fees and US health insurance cancelation that neither of us has. Please help.
Thanks.
I need a knew body.
Hey all; Just a quick update while lying on the couch. While out today with james Patricia, and roger, we discovered my body’s limits. My leg started acting up while in one of many stores and finally decided while in our final store tha becoming lame, and nearly causing me to have to be carried to the car was the name of the game. IN short, body, I hate you, can I have a knew one, please?