[nagdu] Suggestions needed!

[Tami Jarvis]

Okay, following up on Ken's suggestion, I opened my mouth and now have a 
writing project. I blame Ken! /grin/

Seriously, I do think it might be nice to have some semi-formalized 
collection of those rules of etiquette that most of us here just take 
for granted and that we work so diligently to follow. The 
"responsibilities" part of our rights and responsibilities. Most of 
those I have learned from a lot of you, whether it's what you learned 
from your schools or the experience of years of real world guide dog 
use. So this seemed a good place to ask again! /smile/

What do we -- with "we" being responsible, considerate service dog users 
-- consider important when we take our dogs into public? What is good 
etiquette in our dogs? What is good etiquette for us humans?

I'm thinking of a couple of categories for the dogs:

1) Grooming and health
2) public behavior

For the humans... I haven't figured out neat categories for that yet. 
I'm thinking of good dog management -- keep the dog out of the aisle, 
stuff like that. Maybe a bit about how to manage lines and so forth.

I think I'll include a "what to do when..." As we have seen from the 
convention debriefing... Not everybody knows that it's bad form to walk 
off and leave the smelling mess for someone to step in. Ugh! And what 
about those times your perfectly well trained dog goes klepto in the 
supermarket? I say pay for it; others say, "oh, well." I've only had to 
buy an unintended stuffed animal, if anyone is wondering. /lol/

I have a few items I might address for interactions with other service 
dog users... Hm...

Anyway, if anyone has suggestions they would like to see included, you 
can write me off list at tami at poodlemutt.com. It might also be fun to 
discuss some of these things on the list. I'm thinking of the recent 
discussion about riding in cabs. We all have different ways of doing the 
same thing and smoothing over the rough spots we encounter in a crowded 
busy world.

Tami