Oh my paws and whiskers!

Suddenly our little game of social volleyball has turned into three dimensional gender chess and I’m eating all the pieces. I’ve got her fucking money in my hand so she knows that the only way she’s getting it back is if she solves my queer little fairy riddle and I’m not giving her any fucking clues.

Now all of a sudden this Karen is studying me with the intensity of a crime scene investigator. She’s stuck in her Sherlock Holmes mind palace trying to figure out if These are tits or just mosquito bites. Or if I’m a woman or just one of those femboys her kids keep showing around the Tik-Tok.

In the past sixty seconds my customer has thought more about men, women, and the terrifying pit where I lie in between than she ever has in her entire life beforehand. She is stuck in my transgender genjutsu.

Now the customer is always Wrong, because even if her little game of pronoun roulette happens to land in her favour she still stood there for a fucking minute mouth agape, fully admitting that whatever I’ve got going on beneath my jeans is Far beyond her comprehension.

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

There’s no secret or magic solution to your mental health. Some days will be rough even when you’re doing your best and practicing all the coping techniques you can. Don’t despair, it happens! Things will get better again soon. ♡

So, full context, and why you’d want a very intelligent and driven breed in prison, and later in schools, public settings, and with my heavily neurodivergent family:

Arwen was originally adopted out of a Kansas shelter by Disco’s Dogs, a nonprofit organization that screens shelters for intelligent, human-focused dogs to be trained as service dogs for people with Autism-spectrum disorder and other neurodivergent issues.  During the dogs puppyhood/initial training, they’re raised by people serving time at various prisons in CO as part of a prison rehab program.  The programs take all kinds of dogs, of every breed and mix, as long as they’re smart enough to learn commands and don’t freak out around news stimuli.

As much of an asshole as Arwen is, she’s also 100% ready to make friends with new people, isn’t scared of new things or intense stimuli (Loud noises, weird smells, large crowds etc.), learns new and complex commands with ease and can recognize context clues to shape up and behave herself in a professional setting.  She’s a fully trained autism-spectrum service animal and was about to be placed with a family when the poor guy had a serious health problem and had to be moved into assisted living and couldn’t take her.

At about that time, we had grieved the passing of our former dog (another therapy-certified dog named Cody, the most gentlemanly german shepherd to live), and mom was looking to adopt another dog to do child therapy in schools with our local organization HABIC, and was looking for another German shepherd.

Which, if you were a volunteer filling out adoption profiles who didn’t know what a Kelpie is, she probably looks like she might be part german shepherd, right?

To clarify Arwen’s training, for people who are confused:

Arwen was FIRST trained as a Service dog, then trained LATER after we adopted her as a Therapy dog, which has many overlapping skills,  Both are things that require rigorous training, legal ceritifcation, and testing.  When at home, she can fulfil the role of an emotional support animal but mostly she sleeps on the couch and tries to steal cheese.

90% of the time we tend to treat her as a family member/pet, but when she puts her service vest on, she becomes Professional Therapy Dog, and instantly 9000% better behaved, so she can still go into schools, Juvenile detention, Courtrooms and Hospitals to do supervised therapy work with the kids and people there

Climbs on top of people to act as weighted blanket when panic attacks happen (Mostly at home but has happened at Juvenile detention too)

listens very patiently and attentively as the ESL and dyslexic kids read aloud to her (Dogs don’t notice when kids mess up, so they’re good to practice/gain confidence reading to)

be pettable stress ball for kids in therapy or testifying in court

be pettable stress ball for people coping with intense pain

teaching kids social skills (there’s a lot of ways this is done- either with a therapist modeling behavior, or Arwen teaching them directly by communicating with the kid )

Ignore kid’s commands until kids learn to speak to her clearly and calmly, teaching them verbal communication skills

encouraging people to do thier Physical Therapy by being adorable (It’s a lot easier to convince a guy to walk up and down the hall because the dog will enjoy it, than it is to tell him it’s for his own good)

Bruce: oh shit

Alfred: she named it after you

Plus: