Who Let The Dogs Out

This past weekend, we had a Social Style Official Visit and a Reception Style Official Visit and a Grand Officer Instructional and two Transitionals and a Grand Line Meeting. Whew! The social OV had a guest speaker to talk about service dogs, one of the international projects for Eastern Star for 2010 through 2012. The lady who spoke to us works in rehabilitation and has a service dog to help with the therapy and treatment of the patients. It was fascinating to learn about service dogs in general and her use of one in particular. She explained that most of us think of seeing eye dogs when we think of a service dog, but that this is only one kind of service dog out there. There are also service dogs who help with the hearing impaired and also mobility issues. We saw pictures and video of dogs helping people with things like opening the refrigerator, pulling off socks and picking up dropped items. Watching these activities really showed how, for a person in a wheelchair, for example, who is strapped in because they have limited or no balance, having a dog who can pick up a pen or remote or other dropped item can allow for an enormously more independent lifestyle, simply because getting something off the floor can be a chore for someone with this sort of limited mobility, especially if they have poor grip. And being able to get socks off when you can't bend over can be a real challenge. Our speaker also showed us how kids undergoing rehabilitation, especially after suffering burn injuries, can have therapy go from painful to fun when the needed activity is turned into play time with a dog instead of just being a repetitive chores. Using the dogs in therapy activities is also good for showing people who are probably not going to make a full recovery whether a service dog would improve their lives. She also told us about the extensive training programs, both for the dogs and for the recipients. I would have liked to see the dog in action a little bit, but it was a great program! The reception style OV also had a lot of fun in it, but the format is one that is very hard for some of us to appreciate generally. Usually, there are traditional OVs, where the OV is a closed meeting and everything is done pretty much the way you would do it at a regular meeting of a Chapter. Then there are social OVs, which are open to non-members and which usually involve an informational presentation or entertainment event, like the service dog presentation. But the reception style OV doesn't make a lot of sense. It is a closed meeting, so you can't invite non-members, and you shorten some of the ceremonial work, but you only shave off about fifteen minutes of stuff. So if you are going to do a closed meeting anyway, why not just go ahead and do the traditional OV? Inquiring minds want to know. :-) This weekend also reminded me why some people think of us as the Order of the Eating Siblings, instead of the Order of the Eastern Star. :-) On Sunday, we did a Transitional in the morning and then had the OV in the afternoon. The Transitional was planned to start at 8:30 am and to be over betweeen 11:30 am and noon, but then my girls needed to be ready to start helping with the OV at noon or a touch after because that event started at 1:00 pm, so there wasn't going to be time to go get any lunch. My awesome girls in the area suggested that they could put together some sack lunches so we could eat between events there at the hall. Then I got an e-mail that there was going to be a meal after the OV so the girls were thinking of scaling back to just some snack items for between the two events because we'd be eating a meal around 3:30 pm and I thought that was great. So we get to the end of the Transitional and go in for our snack/refreshments and darned if I can't figure out how the snacks were smaller than the sack lunches would have been. What a spread! There were peanut butter sandwiches on cinnamon raisin bread and bagels with raspberry cream cheese and cheese and cracker trays and fruit and fruit salad and the yummiest deviled eggs, and coffee and tea and water and . . . Wow! I was really pleased and touched by the incredible effort put into making sure that we all got something we liked before going on to our next event. I have the best group of Dragon Riders ever! Next weekend I am in Ridgecrest, Burbank, and Ventura.