Pound It

It's always funny to me that the "tricks" the service dogs do often gain more attention and praise than the actual tasks that are usually much more complex and difficult to train. "Cross" and "bow" are two examples that are guaranteed crowd-pleasers. Morey knows both, but this week we added another fun, but useless, trick to his repertoire.

Some context: it's often difficult for quads to shake hands or give high fives. Some of us can't extend our fingers as our hands are in permanent fists and some of us can't grip a hand in order to return a handshake. The greeting that is common among quads (or maybe it's just rugby players) is the fist bump. Anyone can do it and it's a way to greet or congratulate someone.

The other day at rugby practice, one of the guys jokingly held out his fist to Morey and said "Pound it buddy". It looked enough like a target for "touch" that Morey did touch his hand, much to everyone's amusement. I thought this would be a fun thing to put on cue and so we worked on it during my lunch hour. It's a behavior he already knows and the hand signal of an outstretched fist functions as part of the cue, so within half an hour he was consistently nose bumping my fist on the command of "Pound It."

At practice this afternoon, we debuted his new trick. All the guys were impressed and wanted Morey to "pound it" with them. He loved the attention he got and it was really cute. Now Morey really is "one of the guys". So, next time you see him, feel free to ask him to "pound it"...I'm sure he'll be happy to!