Journey

Greetings & Salutations! Welcome, to my first post of the Georgia + Me Blog!!!

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by the title and photo this blog is mainly going to be about my dog, Georgia, and myself as we go through our journey of becoming a Pet Partners Team (fingers crossed!!).  I may add other random things from time to time, but I want this to be a place that chronicles our experiences throughout this journey and beyond. You’ll notice I use the word journey a lot.  The definition of journey is: passage or progress from one stage to another. We’re beginning as a random person and a dog working to become a certified Pet Partners Team, ergo, a journey! I’ve always wanted to use “ergo”!

This whole journey, started over a month ago when I really started considering the idea. Oops, I should probably explain what a Pet Partners Team is! The term “Pet Therapy” is no longer used, now what we would be doing is referred to as Animal-Assisted Activities; meaning we would simply visit people to brighten their day. This could include people in hospitals, nursing homes, schools or other locations. Anyway, back to where this journey began, it came from me asking myself what I was doing in the world that really mattered. Other than being a pretty decent human being I didn’t feel like I was helping anyone in any real way. So, I asked myself what combines bringing something positive into my life, helpings others, and my wonderfully sweet dog. Did a little research and B-I-N-G-O (yes, like the song where the farmer had a dog); I found the Delta Society and their Pet Partners Program. I then did more research and found a local, talented & caring dog/human trainer, who I will refer to as C. I’ve already learned that I need more training than Georgia. We set up a consultation with C in mid February to see if she thought Georgia and myself have what it takes to be trained to become a certified Pet Partners Team. The consultation went well and after some consideration Nathan (my very supportive husband - more on him later) and I decided that we should give it a shot, so here we are today.

We’ve now had two training sessions since the consultation. I will dedicate individual posts for each lesson in the next few days. We meet with C, every other week. I’ll also give you more background on Georgia, as well as, Nathan’s involvement in our journey in some other posts. Baby steps, I’m new to this blogging world! With all this talk of our journey, I’m in the mood for a little “Don’t Stop Believing”, you?