Of Fires and Puppies

Our puppy raiser meeting was to be a scavenger hunt at Bed, Bath and Beyond and Sports Authority.  We were going to do some obedience outside and then inside for the fun. (although, true to my competitive nature, I was interested in completing my form first! 8-)

Little Ava, a black lab puppy, create quite a stir with her big belly. Here she is with raiser Nancy showing off her cute pink belly.

 We all fell in love with Ava, a dark beauty and I am always reminded of Ava Gardner when I hear her name, although Ava Gardner didn't have a pot belly that gently swayed to and fro when she walked.

Golden Gail made the meeting and was calm as she was being greeted by Steve.

 Golden Gail was at the meeting and she was fully recovered from her surgery.  She had a cyst removed from the top of her head and wasn't wearing the cone of shame anymore.  Coastie and Coach were with their raisers and Gail's raiser Roger were waiting in the parking lot for things to get started

Hershey, our group's first chocolate puppy, arrived.  Here she is greeting Katie.

 Our AC Carolyn was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Hershey, which her family sponsored.  Hershey is a chocolate lab puppy and is being raised by one of our new puppy raiser families.

Carolyn comes over to say hello to little Hershey.

 Poor Ava got knocked off her cute puppy pedestal in less than 30 minutes! But we all still love you Ava!

Hershey sits and gazes into the distance.

 Then it was off to the obedience races and we were lined up and doing sit stays and down stays with our pups.

The group is lined up against the wall in various stages of doing a stay and return to your dog.

The camera catches Gail in a rare moment of calm sitting by her raiser Roger. (Roger told me to say that!)

 Gail may have been near the edge of the circle of acceptance, but I think she was doing pretty well as the photo above shows (see Roger 8-).  Our obedience continued with some distractions and then we heard an alarm sound.

Carolyn walks by with some paper mache corona bottles for a distraction.

Coastie was interested, but he didn't break his sit!

 After the alarm sounded, we noticed that there were some people streaming out of the Bed, Bath and Beyond store.  Then, we heard what sounded like a siren.

As you can see from the video, the puppies were amazingly good natured about the noise and the sirens.

Carolyn holds Hershey in her arms.

Carolyn took the opportunity to pose with Hershey.  Turns out that there was some kind of fire on the roof and they sent out two fire trucks.

Photo of the ladder truck with firemen going up on the roof.

 It was a great distraction for the dogs: men in fire suits, alarms, sirens, flashing lights, huge fire trucks and ladder trucks.  The dogs were not impressed.

The puppies weren't impressed by the firetrucks.  They were more captivated by each other.

We ended the meeting by doing a short scavenger hunt through Sports Authority.  Coach teamed up with Ava (I think he has a little crush).  Ava had a little accident inside (Nancy, you do NOT need to return the Shamwow! Keep it with my compliments.  Ava may have future need of it. 8-), but we were very quick and efficient and cleaned it up before anyone even knew it was there.

We were going to take a cute photo of Ava in one of the tiny tents, but we didn't realize that they were all up on the shelves for display.  It made the photo a bit difficult.  So we passed on that.

All in all it was a successful evening.