Itzl loves trees. He'd live in one if he could.
Earth Day, around here, is a day of tree planting ceremonies, and Itzl is a dog that takes his love seriously. The wind blew this tree down and Itzl spent hours investigating it. At one point, he tugged on a branch. I don't know if he was trying to set the tree back up or drag it to the car to take home with us. We planted a new tree in its place.
The weeping pine is one of his favorite trees because the branches sweep down low enough for him to enjoy.
Here, he investigates a jacket dropped by a tree digger.
Being the busybody that he is, he also checks out the border plantings.
Itzl enjoys being an active community member and is involved in many community activities. His primary job is being my ears, but he manages to do other things as well - like mark where he thinks trees should be planted, inspecting the newly planted trees, supervising the workers and visitors, guarding dropped items if they are too big to bring to me, and in general makes himself useful in all the ways a 4 pound dog can be useful, so long as we aren't separated.
He rarely gets more than 6 feet away from me. As you can see, he's off leash - this happens only in venues where he is well known and on private property. At public events where he's not so well known, he either stays in his dawgie bag, stays on top of a table where I'm working (we often to registration or check in or volunteer snack stations), or he's leashed and at my feet, as all good serviec dogs should be.
People are now accustomed to his presence at many of the things we do, so much so that he often appears on the volunteer lists with duties specially assigned to him. at events like tree plantings for Earth Day, it's almost always a small group of people, and he's allowed off leash to do his volunteer duties is addition to his hearing duties for me. It's understood that alerting me takes precedence over anything else he does, and if the people forget that, Itzl never does.
No event is complete without Itzl alerting on multiple sounds. Here, he's alerting on someone enthusiastically honking their car horn. What that had to do with planting trees, we'll never know.
Service dogs love helping, love having work, and are happiest when they have both work and praise.