In A Living Painting

Ever seen the work of M.C. Escher? If so, you'll probably recall the geographical scenes, the combination of real and imaginary, and you might just feel like you're on an acid trip.

One Escher work I recall shows a room of staircases ascending and descending in different ways. Probably dozens of these non-sensical stairs lead to the same place: no where.

Well, that painting was what today was like. We visited the Morris County, NJ courthouse to do some training. Officially, it was to help us learn to navigate metal detectors. In reality, it was such an exercise in dog trust.

See, the courthouse is probably 100 plus years old. And like so many old buildings, it's been built onto time and time again. Throughout the courthouse, there are short flights of stairs leading practically everywhere. Or no where.

Following Garrett through this puzzle was one of the most difficult tasks to date. Walking down a hallway, there'd suddenly appear a flight of six steps leading to a different level of the courthouse. Combine that with the tons and ttons of people in the courthouse awaiting hearings and it made for some tough travel.

Still, taking on this challenge and watching Garrett do so well at it was such a confidence booster. The only real correction he needed throughout was for sniffing at a woman in the elevator. That's it. We probably spent 30 minutes going through this maze and the only bad point was a little sniff? I consider that a pretty darned good exercise.