Puppies and Boy Scouts

 On Tuesday we had our monthly meeting at the Heritage United Methodist Church where the Boy Scouts hold their meeting.

The group waiting in the foyer.

Michele first explained about Southeastern Guide Dogs, their mission and what puppy raisers do.  

Then as everyone was still waiting patiently in the hallway, she talked about the puppies.  She, of course, had Andros, the newest (youngest) and cutest puppy of the group.

Coach watched as Liz got her coat on.

Liz is still not super excited about this boy scout thing.  I think she is missing Essie, who just gave birth to 8 puppies!  All black, 6 male, 2 female.

 

Liz lies on the floor, her raisers Brian and Susan look on.

 Then it was show time.

Coach, a black lab; Liberty, a yellow lab; Andros, being held and a black lab;  Coastie, a yellow lab;  their raisers and Charity's raiser Lois stand in front of the boy scouts.

We brought our puppies out in front of the group and there was a short Q and A.  The kids had to guess who sponsored Lightening and Thunder.

A shot of the boys waiting patiently to be matched with their puppy group.

Another shot of chaos as boys leap up to get into one puppy group as the puppy's name is announced!

Now, I didn't shots of individual group shots (Barbara, if you want to send me some!), as I had Coach and it wouldn't be fair to just use shots of Coach's group.  But suffice it to say that when I looked around the room, fun was being had! Boy scouts were happy!  Puppies were being given an experience of a lifetime.

Gail's Forever Home

Over the Christmas holidays Roger and Michele's puppy Gail was adopted by a family in St. Pete.  The family also has a retired breeder dog, Boomer.  Although Gail's calling is to be a family dog and not a guide dog, her job will still be very important.  Her main handler will be their son Andrew.

Andrew has been asking to get a dog of his own for a long time.  He met a few dogs but knew Gail was the one right away.  He just loved her personality.  He kept saying to his mom, “I want Gail.”  

Andrew, who has a huge smile, is sitting on a sofa with his arms around Gail.  Gail is sitting on the floor between his legs and has a smile on her face.  Boomer, a black lab, is sitting off to the right.

Andrew is on the swim team at his high school and plans to take Gail swimming with him when it warms up.  He hopes she likes swimming as much as he does.   Until it warms up, Gail has a big back yard to play in with Boomer, Andrew, and the rest of the family.  She left with her tail wagging and a Golden smile on her face.

She has a sweet smile on her face in the photo above as well.

Shadow Gets Matched and Cochise Starts His Journey

Our North Pinellas group has had several of our puppies go in for training.  Sunny and Jam have been there since July.  Katy just went in a couple of weeks ago.  As puppy raisers, we wait eagerly to hear back about them worried that they are doing well, making the grade and performing as expected.  We want them to be the best that they can be.  Sometimes that means being a guide dog and sometimes that means going on to another career.

Happily, for the Woodman family, they got the call that Shadow had been matched with a visually impaired partner and that they would be going to graduation to see dog and partner perform as a team. Now, I will turn the story over to Susan Woodman:


Shadow was matched with Luciana Belfiglio of Bradenton.  Shadow is her 2nd guide dog from Southeastern.  He will be living with her retired guide dog Beamer,  a puggle named Lucky and  Mickey the cat.  I was so happy to hear she had other animals, because he was used to a house full with us.  As for  Lu, if I could have hand picked someone she would have be it.  You were right about bringing tissues: we used all I brought and then some.  Lu's vision loss is not obvious at first.  She is legally blind from retinitis pigmentosa.  She has no peripheral or night vision.

 After experiencing life with a guide dog she was able to navigate without accidentally running into people and things.  It has given her more independence.

 As I watched Shadow do his walk with Lu I felt as if I were watching one of my sons graduate from college, except this one wasn't wearing a cap and gown, he was wearing a harness. We are so proud of him!!

 A couple of weeks later, the Woodman's started the guide dog journey again by picking up puppy Cochise.  

They contend that the Southeastern has upped their puppy training game and Cochise is a super smartie able to do things no other puppy can.

Hmmmm.  He does have the blue cape on.

January Information: Meetings, Puppy Updates and Food Warnings

From Our Area Coordinator Carolyn:

PUPPY INFO:

I want to wish Katy a fond farewell.  She's going IFT on January 12th, so she'll miss our next meeting.  Good luck Katy, be good, do good.  She missed the December meeting because of a heat cycle.

Gail has been adopted and I'm sure the Reese's will tell us all about her new family at the meeting on January 12th.

Speaking of Roger and Michele Reese, they have a new pup.  A little black boy named ANDROS.  I've met him and he's cute cute cute!  (Michele and Roger need to contact Cheryl with his birthday so she can add the ticker info to the webpage.)

Also, Don & Susan Woodman are getting another pup and we welcome them back to the group as a repeat.  They are picking theirs up on January 14th, but I sure hope they make it to the meeting on January 12th to get them geared up again.  We don't have his name yet.  A yellow male goldador.  We will have a post in a day or two about their last pup being matched.  It is a pretty wonderful story.

Essie's pregnancy is going well.  She'll be with Brian Davis and Susan Blair until Jan 21st.  I heard Brian got to feel the "kids" kicking last night.

HAVE YOU BEEN DOING YOUR HOMEWORK?

  

Don't forget I gave homework at the last meeting.  Please have your pups busy on the concrete AND please clean their ears (or fake clean them)...  I'll be giving homework assignments every month like this, little things we forget about.  If you haven't read the new manual, please do so.  If you are a repeat raiser, read the new manual to see what is new.

If you haven't been on our calendar yet, PLEASE log on, I've had one raiser have issues, and if it's continuous, we might have to change vendors.  If you haven't signed up to get email updates on the blog, please do so on the right-hand column.

OUR NEXT MEETINGS:

Our next 3 meeting dates (as indicated on the calendar) are:

• January 12th at 10:00 am Oldsmar Flea Market on Tampa Rd (I'll email a meeting place ASAP)
• January 24th location TBD
• February 9th

  IMPORTANT INFO REGARDING CHANGE IN SCIENCE DIET FOOD!!

Dr. Edington, our Southeastern vet, sent an email regarding the reformulating and repackaging of Hills Science diet for 2013. His email states:  "The bottom line is if the packaging looks different and the formulation written on the outside of the package is different than what was previously being fed, at least a week long transition of the "old food" onto the "new food" needs to take place."

What does that mean for you?  It means, don't let yourself get down to the bottom of the puppy food bag!  As you near the bottom, go get a new bag, it will be the new, reformulated one, and then slowly, over a week's time period, start adding in the new stuff for your pup's stomach to get used to it.  

You will be much happier that you did it this way! Trust me.  The other way is sure to involve lots of stomach distress and diarrhea!

RORY PUPS ARE DOING GREAT!

Photo of five black lab tiny puppies sleeping in a whelping crib with one sleeping yellowing lab puppy.

Mom Cassidy is doing great whelping Rory's and another mom's litter. The pups are very adventurous as well. Some have already climbed out of the whleping area, so they had to put up the gate.