Posted on 05/12/2008 2:33:46 PM PDT by radar101
Tyler Hurd, a 23-year-old junior at SCSU, hopes to be a special education teacher.
Hurd spent the past month at Technical High School in St. Cloud, working toward completing the 50 hours of secondary field placement required to earn his teaching license.
But student teaching, along with many other aspects of daily life, is not always simple for Hurd.
When Hurd was 14, he sustained a head injury while playing hockey. The injury resulted in epilepsy, a neurological disorder causing chronic seizures.
Because a seizure can take place at any moment, Hurd was matched with Emmitt, a 2 and a half-year-old black Labrador retriever, trained in seizure response.
Emmitt's $7,000 worth of training allows him the ability to know the difference between left and right, to open and close doors, turn lights on and off, and most importantly, he knows to stay with Hurd in the event of a seizure.
"He became my independence," Hurd said.
Because of the severity of Hurd's disorder, he brings Emmitt everywhere, including Tech High School, where he did his student teaching.
Tech High School has a large Somali population, most of whom are Muslim.
Hurd quickly began to notice many Somali students reacted with extreme fear and even disdain toward Emmitt.
According to Abdirahman Muhumed, program assistant at La Cruz Community Program, it can be difficult for Somali immigrants to adjust to America's love for dogs.
This is because within the Muslim faith, it is considered unclean to touch one. In fact, it is forbidden.
"You have to wash your hands seven times with water, soap and sand,"
He explained that Emmit is highly trained to stay near him at all times. Furthermore, he let them know that under no circumstance would Emmit approach them. Emmit's focus is solely on Hurd.
Though Hurd's students quickly became accustomed to Emmit's presence, the rest of the school's student population was not informed of the dog's purpose.
Hurd said he soon began to notice animosity from students outside his classroom.
He witnessed students scream, run from, taunt and antagonize Emmitt. Hurd resorted to entering and leaving his class while the halls were empty, to minimize the chaos.
Last week, the situation came to a head when one of Hurd's students notified him of a threat.
"He told me there was a group of Somali students who wanted to beat and kill my dog," Hurd said.
Yet threats like these are against the Muslim faith, and Muhumed said it is likely a case of adolescent immaturity.
"Our religion is not allowed to kill a dog," Muhumed said. "That is forbidden."
Yet due to the nature of the threat, Hurd reported the incident to the assistant principal, Lori Lockhart.
"It was two days before she got back to me," Hurd said.
But concerning the incident, Lockhart said no threats were made.
"It was kind of a misunderstanding," Lockhart said.
According to Lockhart, the Tech student only meant that some Somali's don't like dogs and may want to hurt them.
Yet Hurd feels the whole situation was mismanaged.
He said Lockhart agreed to send an email to teachers alerting them of the incident and asking them to notify her of any threats they may be aware of.
According to Hurd, however, the email was never sent.
Hurd has since quit his field placement at Tech because he feels unsafe.
"I am not there because I don't want anything to happen to Emmitt-I feel threatened," Hurd said.
St. Cloud State has waived the remaining 15 hours of student teaching Hurd has yet to complete due to the circumstances.
Whether the administration at Tech High School feels they could have done more to educate their students about the purpose of service dogs is yet to be confirmed.
"We have a strong working relationship with the public schools," said Kate Steffens, dean in the college of education.
Steffens said she plans to set up a meeting with both the principal and vice principal of Tech High School in an attempt to come up with solutions.
"We want a win-win situation," Steffens said.
Yet Hurd feels it all may be a little too late.
"Because he's seizure response, he has a right to be anywhere I go," Hurd said. "To be threatened in public is a disability rights issue."
liberal dilemma, who’s side to take? The handi-cap or the muzzie? I bet liberal heads were exploding in the teacher’s lounge.
No, this is how they insidiously assimilate *us* into their evil ideology...and the “PC” crowd will aid and abet the Islamic conquest of America.
Wiki is full of crap:
“The breed is believed to have originated in Muslim Spain”
No, it did NOT.
It found its way there [and many other places] via Egyptian and Phoenecian traders.
It was [much] later named for the island with which the majority of them were later associated.
The supposed “DNA” authority is also the idiot who came up with the “yellow papers” for fraudulently registered AKC dogs.
Rather than utterly revoke the papers of dogs found to have been fraudulently registered, as was done in the past, she spear-headed the new AKC “policy” of issuing conditional registration in which the 4th generation litters of the fraudulent dogs could again regain full AKC status.
[regardless of the fact that who knows *what* breed or mix the dog may actually have been and/or who the sire was]
It completely undermines the integrity of the carefully kept stud books, which, ironically, the AKC was created to protect and maintain.
And yes, the bitches are the hunters.
In Spain, they -drown- most of the male puppies and Ibizans on the isle of Ibiza live lives of squalor and desperation, which often end in starvation or road kills.
Members of IHCUS recently independently rescued a slew of Ibizans from fates worth than death.
As a bit of trivia, Ibizan Hounds accompanied Hannibal over the Alps.
Salamander
[”mom” to 6 of them for the last 17 years]
Wow.
I just about bit clean through my lip.
BULLSH!T
Any "infidel" is thought of the same way that they think of this dog. Beneath contempt, and killing such a person is no more sinful than stepping on an ant.
More people need to speak the truth about Islam, LOUDLY.
point of order - it’s “12th century horsesh!t”, not 14th.
Their society can be historically shown to have nearly completely stopped advancing in the 12th century.
I have a friend with an Ibezian. Smart dog, but always ‘scoping the target area’. His radar is always on full-scan. Short attention span for training. I wish I had her patience (and I have mostly terriers).
It’s not liberal “stupidity”, at least on some of their parts.
They share the common goal with the muzzies of the destruction of Western Values.
Sorry!
No desire to cause angst or pain.
(To you, anyway.)
It’s not really all that confusing to figure out where a lib will fall on any issue.
Just think about the side that would support traditional, Western, Judeo-Christian culture and values, and they will take the opposite side.
Easy.
There is no diversity in Islam.
They see the whole world as theirs to convert, subjugate, or kill.
There is no other choice.
And leftists side with them because they are trying to destroy Western culture.
Yep, we need an analog to the ACLU and CAIR that intentionally causes disputes between our culture and laws and those of the invading muslim hordes.
The ACLJ is fighting the ACLU’s attempt to destroy all vestiges of Christianity in public life, so they’re already busy.
Better a bit lip than banned for life....:)
The school should never have caved in to this guy.
That American needs his dog.
I can’t think of anything worse than having a dog’s keen sense of smell and being in the same room with a muslim.
At every turn, we should ALL side against Islam. Education about Islam would probably help about half of those currently siding with them,
but there are some truly sick leftists out there that will side with anyone that wants to destroy America as we know it.
She is really a mischief pup and hysterically funny! Just on Sunday she did another silly. She is now in agility training and was introduced to tunnels last Tuesday. We were walking on the polo fields near our house with some friends, and all our dogs were sniffing around in the drainage ditch around the fields. Just as I said, "I sure hope Ruby doesn't think that culvert is a tunnel," my friend shouted "There she is!" and pointed to the other end of the culvert 30 feet away as Ruby came popping out like a muddy jack-in-the-box and pranced around leaping and barking, "I did it! I did it! Did you see me do the tunnel?"
My older dog Shelley (SHR Sumo's CoDoz Brown Bombshell, AX, AXJ, AD, AJ, CGC) looks at her with disdain for being such a clown.
Your girls are burning up the track! How are they doing in the championship points so far?
Between the humans? or the dogs? :-)
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