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.

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!!!

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.

Horsing Around

Our Thursday night meeting took place at the Lapham's stable way up North!  We started out slowly with some meet and greets with a very calm horse who was good friends with a dog and very used to having a dog run around his legs.

Photo of the group on the left of the stables milling around with their puppies.

Nancy and yellow goldadore (I think!) Orchid and Bob at the beginning of the meeting).

 One by one people would slowly bring their puppies up to meet the horse.  If the puppy seemed interested, they would let them get a bit closer.  If not, they would walk away.

Brian and black lab Liz approach the horse.

 We also had some obedience during the meeting.

Fred and Jam standing by the side of the road waiting for the obedience to begin.

Lois with yellow lab Babe waiting on the road for obedience to begin.

Karen with yellow lab Justice, who was sniffing around while she waited.

Brian and black lab Liz getting into place for obedience.

The whole North group lined up by the side of the road for an obedience exercise with food.

Food in a plastic container (so they can't actually get it!).

Everyone patiently waiting their turn to walk the gauntlet.

Jam seems a little anxious, but Babe is sitting and looking pretty.

Liz starts the gauntlet.

Now it's Jammy's turn.

Jammy did pretty well.  He wasn't food distracted.  Which is amazing considering how he is in the cafeteria.

Jammy looking up at a horse.  He loves them.

The group milling around the stables.

Jam and Fred walk by some stables where the horses are leaning out to say hello.

Lois has found a friend in this horse!

He does this weird thing with his lip.  Kind of like Mr. Ed.

Bobby started out scared of horses, but by the end of the tour, was fine with them.

Bob is getting the Mr. Ed treatment.

Bobby and raiser Kerry with a horse.  Bobby isn't scared at all.

Bobby goes closer to the horse.

One of the horses is walked by our line of puppies.

Our puppies in a sit stay as the horse is walked by.