Annie was Molly's dog, a black Labrador
Retriever. She was whelped October 1, 1989, and was the product of a
backyard breeding. I say "Molly's dog" because one of the main
reasons I even considered another dog was to keep Molly company while I was at
work.
Her full (registered) name was
WYSIWYGS Round Midnight but she was never shown. She was, of course, spayed.
Ironically, her hips were fine. The vet who did the x-rays opined that
she'd be "OFA Excellent" easily.
Of the two, she's the one who came to stay with me while I was doing my
out-patient rehab at Patricia
Neal Rehab Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. During my stay there, I
became acquainted with a therapy-animal program called "HABIT" (which
stands for Human-Animal Bond in Tennessee).
Every Monday evening, HABIT volunteers would bring their dogs to my hospital
room for a visit. I can recall the anticipation of "HABIT
night"! Finally, I was introduced to the other part of the HABIT
program--Quimby, a lab-golden mix (she looked like a black lab) would come help
with my speech therapy--by talking to her and giving her commands, I was working
on my speech.
When I finally went from in-patient to out-patient status at Patricia Neal, I
went to stay with my parents and Annie, the smaller of my labs, came to be with
me. We didn't get a lot of training done (although we did do some), but we
got a lot of socializing done!
I returned to my home in Georgia in the fall of '93, and started back to
college in the fall of '94. In spite of rehabilitation, the viral
encephalitis had left me with mobility problems. I returned to college by
getting around campus on an electric scooter. By my last couple of quarters, I
was getting around better--to the point that I felt like, if I had a dog or
something to help stabilize me, I could probably walk. Now, the thing about
encephalitis-related disabilities is that while the rehabilitation is slow,
progress is slow and steady. 
So, while I'd entered Patricia Neal as a
quadriplegic, I had, through years of work, made it to the point that I could
drive, do limited walking, and live independently. I figured my mobility
problems would pass just the same way, and for that reason, thought I'd need a
service dog for two years at most. For that length of time, I didn't want
to apply for a service dog somewhere--heck, I had 2 labs at home. If I could
train one of them to do service work, then when I didn't need a SD anymore, she
could go back to being a pet.
So started the search for training so Annie
could be my SD. After lots of nos--"We only train our own
dogs"--and one "leave her with us for a year", Pat
Gonser introduced me to Pets
& People: Companions in Therapy and Service and the idea of
self-training. So Annie and I trained and refined what she already knew,
and over the Fourth of July weekend in 1996, we presented ourselves at Meridian
to get (we thought) an Access Card (lets one take a SD in training in places
like a SD, so one can finish the "public" part of training).
Annie did so well over the course of the weekend, we got our certification
instead.
She accompanied me to class at Mississippi State University, where I
did graduate work, for 1 and 1/2 years, until being an old dog just
finally got to be too much. Michael took over for the last semester,
but Annie went to graduation!
