Celebration Station

Thursday, a rainy, rainy night, we all trooped out to Celebration station, to participate in our monthly meeting.  Carolyn, in addition to having some great noise (apart from the thunderstorm) distraction games for us to play had a lot of news to pass on like the very cool puppy raiser training conference that was coming up in June.  Many in our group were going to be participate in it.
 

Roger is holding Sunny, a yellow lab, who is sitting and Fred and Jam , who is sitting as well, are on the right.  They flank the doorways of Celebration Station.

Since it was raining so hard, we met under the canopy, so everyone going to Celebration Station walked a puppy gauntlet.  It was a very cute puppy gauntlet and we even had a crowd at the windows who just stood eating their ice creams and watching us go through our obedience exercises.  Carolyn is so crazy good about obedience exercises, she draws a crowd! 8-)

Stephanie and yellow lab Coastie come up the path.

Fred and Jam, Brian and black lab Liz, Lois and yellow lab Babe, and Stephanie and Coastie are waiting for Carolyn and her hat.

Carolyn tried to get Liz to react to the sombrero.

Soon, Carolyn put on her sombrero and walked around to each puppy to see if they would react to the hat.  Reacting to hats, sunglasses, earphones, etc., is one of the tests that a puppy will have to go through once they go in for training.  So wearing a hat or doing an exercise like this one is useful to get your puppy used to strange things happening.

I think Jam is laughing at the sombrero. (Jam is in a sit on the left of Fred looking up at Carolyn.)

I think Jam found the hat amusing.  Carolyn told us that she had four sombreros.  Then she had to tell us why.

Shadow, a very sturdy black lab, thinks the sombrero smells like tacos.

Every puppy was pretty even tempered when it came to the hats.

Babe, a yellow lab, wants to know why Carolyn has four sombreros. "Why, Carolyn?"

The only exception was one of the puppy raisers, who will remain nameless, who said near the end of the exercise, "Oh, your wearing the hat for the exercise?!" That was pretty funny!

Carolyn surrounded by puppies staring at her huge hat.

In addition to the hat distraction, we worked on noise distractions.  I took a little bit of film on it.

Since Jam was still limping, when everyone went inside and upstairs, we went home.  But inside was a wealth of loud games, pinball machines, all sorts of noises and things to distract and give a good exposure to your pet.  It also includes lots of children.  So be prepared for the public and to be stopped and asked to have your dog pet or if your dog is over 10 months, be prepared to say no in a polite way and explain the rules.  You can always have them follow you outside where you can take off the coat.  If you want and if your puppy is calm.