Kiwanis Club of North Suburban Golden K St. Paul

LaMar Zollinger got our blood circulating again with the ringing of the bell and that ever present “Harris stretch” opening meeting routine – routines are good!

Once again there were no guests and we did have one circle three report from Bill Campion announcing that Jack Gooding had another eye shot (#54) and seems to be seeing better, doing artwork and will try to join us next week.

We had another respectable crop of Happy Dollars again starting with LaMar announcing he brought his “outdoor” goldfish into his garage 120 gallon stock tank – safe for the winter we hope and no report of falling off a ladder this time – thank goodness! Gordon Marten is back from a hospital visit where he had a procedure to keep his white cells from attacking him and has a medication to keep them in check – only 300 known cases of this so that makes Gordon a “rare specimen”. John Rutford put his dollar in for bragging rights to a granddaughter getting married – it was even a part of a church service – sort of unusual. Joe Kilpatrick was back from his 60th high school reunion. He noted that about half were dead already and this brought him to investigate life expectancies – finding Minnesota is second only to Hawaii. Marv Boeckermann was glad to be back after a three-week vacation – welcome back Marv! Jim Whiting put in six happy dollars to celebrate his 6th great grandchild – wow! Ken Bergstedt had a letter from one of his students from the class of 1959 at Alexander Ramsey High School and a side note that those that can – do – and those that do more – teach. He finished off the session with another “story” about a guy in London that collected parking fees for a museum – 7 million pounds over his lifetime before he disappeared. It turned out he didn’t work for the municipality – nor did he work for the museum – just got rich on his own. Keep those stories coming Ken!

We note again that there is a change of location for the November 1st and 8th meetings. They will be held at Fairview Community Center those two weeks due to the Roseville hall being booked for something else – put it on your November calendars!

Gil Ward introduced our guest speaker (and her dog). Susan Rieke, president of Partner Services was there with her therapy dog, Ari, to tell us all about the services that therapy dos provide our community. She started by telling us the difference between service dogs (one dog for a specific person for a particular disability – like blindness) and therapy dogs (dogs owned independently and subjected to certification to be present in hospital, hospice, classes and other places where the presence of a dog will be there only to provide comfort and love). Susan gave us numerous examples of how therapy dogs help people to overcome depression, stress and other kinds of situations needing some kind of support. It is amazing how just having a dog come in the room changes the way people feel. Ari did walk around our group a little and Susan showed us the rewards (liver treats) that helped give Ari guidance as to when he was doing a good job. Ari was also a show dog for a while and played in Annie in a local school play. I think he most interesting concept is how having a dog entering the room breaks the tension and gives people something else to think about other than their immediate problems. All in all this was an interesting topic and having the dog present helped us understand the benefits of therapy dogs – friendship, anticipation, spark of joy, socialization and even anxiety relief. The message that Susan left us with was that any dog equals good therapy. Of course, training and certification complete the necessary elements to assure that the dog is a good dog for the job. We thank Susan for bringing us this upbeat talk and showing us Ari the Airedale– a true spirit of therapy dogs.

Next week, we get to hear from a locally renowned Climatologist from the University of Minnesota, Dr. Mark Seely. Bring a friend to Kiwanis next week, it’s sure to be an educational and informative session. Our social time is 1:30 - the meeting starts promptly at 2 PM.