Meet Again

A Dog?

A week later, Sammy was able to come home and that Friday, for the first time in a month, Rory and Logan took the kids to Friday night dinner.

"Are you gonna send Nicky back to school on Monday?" Lorelai asked. The first day that Nicky went back to school after being in the hospital, he had 2 seizures, so Rory and Logan decided to keep him home until the medication started working.

"I don't know" Rory said. "There's so muck going on right now. Medication, and doctor's appointments, and alert dogs, and learning to swallow pills, and all this stuff. I don't know if it's a good idea for him to go"

"Did you say alert dogs?" Emily asked

"Oh, so that's another thing. They were telling us that a really good option could be for Nicky to get a service dog"

"What would a dog do?" Richard asked

"It would be trained to do certain things" Logan said. "Like go get someone if Nicky has a seizure. It would also be able to alert us before he has a seizure which could give us a chance to prevent it"

"Hey, that's cool" Lorelai said. "Are you gonna do it?"

"We're looking into it, but his doctor seems to think it's a good idea, especially since he's been having to miss school because of this"

After several weeks of research, Rory and Logan made the decision to get a service dog for Nicky. In May, once the school treat had ended, Logan took Nicky to California to go through 2 weeks of training with his service dog.

On Friday afternoon, Rory took Grace and Sammy to Colin and Stephanie's house. Grace, Liam, and Ellie were playing in the backyard, and Rory was sitting on the porch with Stephanie. Sammy was sitting with them.

"He looks bigger" Stephanie said. "Did he get bigger?"

"He did, actually" Rory said. "We had a checkup the other day and he almost caught up to where he would be if he were born on his due date"

"That's good"

"Yeah, it's great"

"So tell me about this dog" Stephanie said.

"He's a border collie, his name is Shadow, Nicky loves him" Rory said

"Why exactly does Nicky need to be there for 2 weeks?"

"Put simply, Nicky's learning how to use his service dog, and the dog is learning about Nicky" Rory said. "Nicky's gonna learn to walk with him, the different ways the dog alerts him and what they mean"

"What do they mean?"

"So the dog is trained to alert for seizures or anything that could cause one" Rory said. "He'll alert Nicky to anything going on that might cause a seizure, like a high or low heart rate. But if Nicky does have a seizure, the dog is trained to go get someone. Nicky also has to learn how to handle the dog. He has to know that his dog is a working dog, so if we go somewhere, people might ask to pet the dog, and he has to tell them no"

"Just out of curiosity, why can't people pet the dog?"

"It's important that the dog is focused on Nicky. If he's in school and kids are trying to pet the dog, the dog gets distracted and could miss something" Rory said. "That's not to say he won't get time to just be a dog, but it's important that people aren't distracting him when he needs to be focused"

"Focused on listening to the commands of a 6 year old?" Stephanie chuckled

"Apparently" Rory said. "Nicky's also super excited about the idea that his dog can go anywhere he does, and the fact that his dog has a 'doggy jacket'. You know the vests that service dogs wear?"