Shelby's blog

Howdy, I wanted to let veryone know how our visit went.

 

Shelby, AKA as the Petite Princess or PP, and I got up early Saturday morning and got ready to go to our 10:30 appointment at the VA Hospital in Martinez. We left in plenty of time and didn’t have much traffic so we were a bit early so we headed into the facility. We didn’t get very far when we met 2 Korean War Vets, one in a wheelchair and one “helping” his buddy move along. You could tell these two had been friends for a long time, that was just so great to see!They just loved Shelby and we talked for about 10 minutes and I gave them each one of her pictures in her wagon. What a great way to start!!!!

 Going inside the building we signed in and headed to the Rec Room area, where we met several Vietnam era vets and again, they couldn’t have been nicer or any sweeter to the PP. We headed down the hall to one of the nurses stations where again they were really sweet to Shelby and made us feel as welcome as they could.

 We met Cookie, who is the lady in charge, and she was as nice and pleasent as she could be. She let me know that she had brought her golden to work with her for 7 years but lost her last spring. She is contacting HBGRR and is starting the process of getting a new golden.

 We only had one “incident” I was at one of the nurses station and one particular nurse just flat didn’t like us. So, as her tone of voice got a little more surely, my first thought was to mirror her attitude and tone of voice, but I just got sweeter and more pleasent as our “conversation” went along. I let Cookie know about it but she wasn’t concerned. She said some folks just don’t get it. I just chuckled and said I understand.

 Next we ventured down to the rehab area where we met 2 young vets rehabing from the Gulf war. One was doing his best to get out of his wheel chair and walk out of “this place” and the other had a brain injury. We talked about football and when I learned the second vet was from Redding, I told him that we go to Redding quite often and while we were there one time I met Merle Haggard in a Mexican Resturant, we had made a connection!

 We stayed for 2 hours and as we were getting ready to leave, the first two vets we met stopped by one more time to say goodby to the PP and when he reached out from his wheelchair for Shelby, he shocked her with a bit of static electricity, man, she did not like that and she was done and ready to go, right then. She almost drug me to the door. He felt terrible about it, he was crushed. I assured him she was fine, Cookie assured him she was fine but Shelby was not having any part of it.

 We said our goodbye’s and started for the parking lot, but we met 2 more folks on the way.

 We had a terrific time, met a lot of very caring people who were happy we came to see them. Cookie told me we were welcome to come back any time we wanted.  It was a great first visit and my fears were put to rest.

 Don’t ever underestimate “the power of dog”