Puppy Meeting at the Girl Scouts

Photos by Barbara.  Text by Cheryl.

Last Thursday we had our puppy meeting during one of Troop 973's meeting in Old Harbor Bay.  It was quite a gathering.

These pups are training to help someone who can't see

Carolyn got us started off by telling the girls exactly what the job of a puppy raiser is.

Kudzu,  SIT!

For a while her puppy Carly listened. Then her puppy decided to take a break!  The girls thought that was too funny and it was a nice teachable moment for Carolyn to show what to do when your puppy gets the sillies.



Close your eyes and imagine what it would mean to you, if you couldn't see

As you can see from this photo, Carolyn ended up handing off her pup to Susan. After the talk we all broke up into groups of two (there were 9 pups and 18 girls). The girls were going to rotate around and meet as many pups as they could.

Karen has Liberty in a sit while two girl scouts
are sitting nearby to pet her.

Here is Liberty and Karen with two girl scouts.

Some of us did some obedience and had the girls watch that before we broke into petting.  

Lois and Bill have Charity doing some down stays for the girls.

Brian, Susan and Liz are standing with two of their girl scouts.

Black lab Andros  has two fans!

Coastie sitting beside two girl scout fans

There was something that happened that was kind of cute.  Some of us brought business cards for our puppies.  We got them for the walkathon.  Coach has his own for the blog.  Well, the girl scouts thought those cards were AMAZING!  They wanted one for each dog.  It became THE collectable.  It was really cute.

Karen and Lightning with Bob and Carly in the background.

After we met with the girl scouts, we showed them how to play puppy tic tac toe. It proved to be an interesting game as Coastie and Coach  are 13 and 11 months old, respectively, and not fixed and we have a couple of young lady pups who are nearing their "red tent" time! 

One of the black team pups does a down stay in his corner.  This might be Coach.

Jerry holds Thunder's leash as Liberty watches for Karen who is out of sight of the camera.

Stephanie is giving Coastie a stay command.  There are two black labs in their squares.  The girl scouts are watching.

Karen stands in Lightning's square.  There is a yellow pup behind her and a black pup in front of her.

An almost full board is achieved! 

In the end, it turned out to be a draw!  Those smart girl scouts. 8-)

We took some group shots and then the girls scouts did a really neat thing:

The girl scouts did their evening meeting end thing where they pass along a squeeze and a prayer. They were in a circle around us.

What was so cool, I thought, was that all the girls and their troop leaders circled us and the pups and then they did their closing ceremony.  They crossed arms, passed on a squeeze and a prayer for all the puppies to be successful and become guide dogs.  It was all very sweet.

New Author for Our Blog! Please Welcome Her!

Did you notice that you just got a whole bunch of new posts?

Did you notice how nice the photos were?

Did you notice that there were lots and lots of lovely photos?

Well, that was the work of puppy raiser Barbara L. who is raising Thunder with her husband Jerry.  She will posting with me now in this blog.  Please welcome her as an author to the Puppy Central blog!!

Thanks so much Barbara!!

Distractions, Distractions, Distractions!

Saturday was our Southeastern Guide Dog puppy raiser monthly meeting and we had it at the clubhouse at Waterchase.  AC Carolyn brought along a host of noisy and innovative distractions with which to subject our puppies and we also used the public.

Children walk by our puppies and serve as distractions as the puppies try to maintain a down stay.

A mom and her two children were just coming out of the pool, so Carolyn had them walk by the puppies a couple of times to see if any of them would break their down stays.  The kids seemed to enjoy being the center of attention and the dogs really liked them as well.

Gail sitting up and staring at the red and black broom making its way toward her.

Carolyn also brought a broom and swept up the sidewalk.  Some pups were curious, like Gail in the above photo.  Some didn't care (like Coach).

Carolyn also used silk flowers which she flapped together in front of the dogs.  Here she is in front of Gail, but Gail didn't break.

 Carolyn also used silk flowers and a very small red wagon.  It was interesting to note which items the dogs reacted to.  Gail had no reaction to the flowers. Coach went to smell them.  Coach didn't have any interest in the wagon, but Gail was fearful of it.

Gail runs behind Michele when the wagon comes her way.  She did come out and go sniff the wagon  though!

 These distractions also give Carolyn a good idea of what needs to be worked on with each puppy raiser's dog and she can then give helpful advice to the puppy raiser about what can be done if any of the dogs exhibit any fear reactions.  In Gail's case, they were pretty easily able to get her to go sniff the wagon.

Orchid, a yellow goldadore, sniffs at the wagon, but doesn't break her sit stay.

Babe, a yellow lab, gets some loving by Tim, a new puppy raiser waiting on a puppy.

Then we all went on a walk that included a wooden bridge that went over a river/creek.  Coach did a nifty poo on the move, which was interesting.  This was despite my pulling over a couple of times and giving him the opportunity to poo.  Sigh.

Puppies laid out on the tic tac toe board on the shady parking lot.  All  are in a down stay but one in the far corner.

Then we played a couple of games of puppy tic tac toe and took off for our air-conditioned cars and home!

Thirsty Marlin: Quasi Meeting!

This will be a nearly wordless post.  Our regularly scheduled meeting had to be canceled due to inclement weather.  However, there were many who just wanted to get together for companionship and food and drinks.  The Thirsty Marlin was nearby, the waitstaff was willing and the puppies were good.

What more needs to be said?! Since I can't tell by looking who many of the puppies are, I may not be able to caption all of the photos or rather caption them correctly.  What's that saying about all black cats at night....  I'm sorry.

Feel free to add a correction in the comments and I'll fix the caption!  I would like to thank Michele for sharing her photos as Fred and I were on vacation and not able to be at the quasi meeting.

Stephanie and Coastie, Susan with Jam and Sue.

I think this may be Liz.

Perhaps Gail and Tabina?

Coastie under the table.

Liz, black lab down under a chair.

Katy, a golden, eying some children throwing rocks in a pond (off camera).

I think this is Jam, Liz and Gail mixing it up.

Jam letting the server know that you cannot pet a coated dog. 

Liz?

Countryside Mall

Today we had a great hunt and seek game at the Countryside Mall, but before that happened, AC Carolyn gave us some awesome news!

AC Carolyn standing and going over some items on her list.  Second in command Stephanie is sitting next to her.

Puppy raiser Stephanie, who has Coastie, had volunteered to be the official second in command for the group for Carolyn!  Stephanie has already shown some amazing leadership qualities by her skillful handling of the City of Clearwater and the resulting sponsorship of her puppy Coastie. So having her as the second in command will be fabulous and a great thing for our group!

The group is listening to AC Carolyn. (Sylvia, Michele, Sue, Roger and Carey, in back)

We had a pretty full meeting today from brand new puppies to ready to go back to Guide Dog U.

AC Carolyn is explaining the AKC canine good citizen obedience test. On the opposite side you can see Karen, Bev, and Bob.

Carolyn had us line up so that we could try out some of the AKC's Canine Good Citizenship tests.

Getting in a line to do some of the tests from the AKC canine good citizen test. (Fred and Jam, Sue and Bibi, Bev and Sunny and Karen and Babe)

The first test was to have a person come up and greet you, shake your hand, have a short conversation.  Steve, Carolyn's husband, was going to be handing out our Mall event finder pages and serving as our nice person greeter.

Blake and yellow lab puppy Tabina. Tabina was the star of the Mall and everyone wanted some puppy kisses. 

Blake and puppy Tabina were the first to go.  Tabina was amazing, especially for a little puppy.

Steve greets Blake while Tabina sits calmly by her side.

Blake, as her puppy raiser, did a great job!  She was calm, cool and collected and it traveled right down the leash to keep Tabina calm as well.

Steve greets Stephanie will Coastie lies down calmly at her side.

Steve went down the line to greet our new second in command, Stephanie, whose puppy Coastie, did a great job.

Steve greets Susan while Liz sits and tries to gets Susan's attention by tugging a bit on the leash.

Then he went over to Susan and Liz, where that team was wonderful as well.

Steve greets Carey while Bobby starts to get up.

When he got to Carey and puppy Bobby, Bobby got up a little bit, but nothing Carey couldn't handle.

Steve greets Fred while Jam is looking the other way. (Ha! Super lucky for us!)

Steve went down to Fred and Jam and Jam just happened to be looking the other way.  So, they completely passed the test.

Tabina gets an ear massage from Cheryl

The next task was to do an ear massage and a paw massage.

Tabina gets a foot massage from Cheryl.

Blake and Tabina did a great job.

Liz gets an ear massage from Cheryl.

Liz was very patient while I massaged her ears.

AC Carolyn gives Jam an ear massage.

Even Jam was a good boy while AC Carolyn gave him an ear massage.  Then we were released to find certain items in the mall such as headless dummies, lifesize statues, which I captured some of in a video at the end of this post.

Babe, a yellow lab being puppy sat by Karen, gives her a big kiss from a proper sit. 

After we had done most or all of the tasks set out for us, we headed back to talk about it.  Then there was a little puppy loving.  But before we get to the puppy loving, here is a short video of some of our tasks:

Bob finally gives in and gets some Tabina puppy time.

Karen follows Bob for some Tabina puppy loving.

And some of the puppies were able to just relax, like Gail who was outside the circle of acceptance at the beginning of the meeting, but calmed down after mallwalking for the whole meeting.

Roger and puppy Gail. Gail is in a down at his feet during a quiet moment.

Ending on a good note! Go Gail and Roger!!!