Sophie's Training Update

Remember Sophie?  Here's her latest training update!

Work progress:

Pup is class ready, meaning she is ready to be matched with a student. This process could take some time, mean while she will continue to work at maintaining and improving her skills.

Areas for improvement:

Escalators are a challenge that she is working on, as well as confidence and concentration. She can be a little over sensitive.

Positives about the dog:

Wonderful obedience, gorgeous face, loves to give kisses and is great to work with.

Sophie's In-For-Training

Just got that dreaded email... it's time for Sophie to go to college.  Like most parents, I feel a mixture of pride and dread that her time has come.  She is still so immature, only 48 pounds, and it really doesn't feel like she could possibly be ready for her formal training at the Guide Dog Foundation.  However, I trust that they will figure her out and, in many ways, it will be nice to have an answer to the "what's gonna happen with Sophie?" question.  For a year now we've been wondering if she will be a guide dog, a vet dog, a service dog, a breeder, or a pet.  Even though it is months away, her in for training is the first step to answering that question. 

Once she goes in for training, the week of July 25, we won't see her again until she graduates.  We will get vague updates every two months and maybe some pictures.  It's going to be hard, especially on my parents, but I know she'll be fine in the kennel and will have a blast with her roommate.  Hopefully I'll get a break in train-the-trainer so I can see her before she goes!

Happy 4!

I made it home for the weekend after a totally exhausting week at work. Many folks were on vacation or out of the office, so I found myself taking on a lot of responsibility. We didn't have the boys coming in for training, so I did a lot of individual field trips into town with the dogs. Crisco to the coffee shop, Joplin to lunch, Cocoa to the train station, and Sprinkles home for the weekend.  This allowed me to get to know the individual dogs better and to assess their specific training needs. Train-the-trainer begins on Tuesday. This will be 6 weeks of extremely intensive lecture and practicum on how to be a dog trainer. ECAD holds this course every summer and interested people can pay to attend. As part of the 6 weeks, we each get assigned our own dog to "finish". This means that the dog will be with us, essentially acting as our service dog and forming a very tight bond only with us. For the entire time, we are not allowed to separate from the dog, taking it everywhere we go and getting it ready to hand over to a client with disabilities at the end of train-the-trainer. I will be blogging about train-the-trainer on my blog (here, duh) and likely also on ECAD's Facebook page.

Sophie and Sprinkles

But before class begins, I am enjoying a not-so-relaxing weekend at home with relatives visiting and 4 crazy dogs (Pauly, Sophie, KK, and Sprinkles, an ECAD dog). 4 for the fourth!  Sprinks and I need to have a chat about this 6am wakeup call thing because it's not working for me.  Yesterday she joined my mom, brother, and I on 4 hours of painful errands (Costco, Target, Marshall's, Home Depot) and was absolute perfection.  She was focused, followed all directions, and was practically invisible.  I was really impressed and proud of her.

Tuesday Miscellany

Tuesday morning text message exchange with my mother:
Mom 8:51am: Sophie just ate a juicy mouthfull of someone else's diarrhea.  She stinks.  Any suggestions?  I can't find the doggie toothbrushes.  Help.
8:53: I would just use a regular toothbrush.  The dog toothpaste should be in the med cabinet.  Tell her she is gross.
9:06: I misread and used Crest.  Is that bad?
9:23: Oh lord, mother.


I drove Fire the stud dog back to PA yesterday.  He didn't fit in my car very easily and spent the entire journey trying to get comfortable.  Stay tuned for Fire x Blondie babies in about 9 weeks!  During my journey, I learned that PA radio bleeps out the word "sex" from songs.  America is so weird.

ABC aired the video about Rose and ECAD last night.  Check it out:

Happy 1st Birthday!

 HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY, SOPHIE!

And happy 25th anniversary, mom and dad!

5 Dogs ≠ Relaxing Day Off

While the title of this post is true, 5 dogs does not equal a relaxing day off from my job training dogs, it does equal a fun and exciting and unproductive day spent frolicking outside.

This is how Sophie fell asleep last night

"KK" looking very cerebral in 'her' chair

Sophie being patient with the Pipsqueak

"Whew! Chasing butterflies is tough work"

Boom! Bang! Bake! Bathroom!

If you live in the Northeast, you enjoyed/endured/survived (insert verb, mad libs style) some big house-rattling thunderstorms this evening.  If you live elsewhere, your facebook newsfeed undoubtedly provided you with a suspenseful, edge of your seat, witty and insightful blow-by-blow of the house-rattling thunderstorms.  Either way, we have established that there were, in fact, thunderstorms.  In case you require a visual:

Here is documented proof of the blowing trees and swirling skies

 My helpers and I took advantage of the "indoor weather" and baked oatmeal raisin cookies:

Pauly sticks real close, but no, no he's certainly not afraid.  Just protecting the women-folk.

During the most severe thunder, Pauly excused himself to leave the girls to finish baking.  Apparently the bathroom rug is suddenly the most comfortable bed in the whole house.  No, no, he's not at all afraid.  Not even a little.  The bathroom is just so comfortable... when it's storming.

Speaking of bathrooms, I finished Tina Fey's hilarious, hysterical, totally awesome book today (seriously, I liked it.  Go, read! Not in public, though, because people will think you're crazy laughing to yourself in the corner of Starbucks.  Good way to scare them out of the comfy chairs, though.).  One of my favorite quotes is: "That's the kind of trouble you get when diverse groups of people actually cross paths with one another.  That's why many of the worst things in the world happen in and around Starbucks bathrooms."

It's funny cause it's true, at least when you live in Manhattan.

Pool Party

Five faces of a fun day

Stubbornness

Simone de Beauvoir once said, "In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid."

While taking the dogs on a fairly hilly 2.5 mile walk this morning, Pauly essentially threw a doggy temper tantrum.  Let me preface this story by saying that Pauly's willfulness (not to be confused with stubbornness) is one of my favorite things about him.  For example, when he doesn't want to get into the hot car, he sits down in the driveway and rolls onto his back.  When he doesn't want to leave the beach (his favorite place on earth), he lays down in the sand and insists that I either carry or drag him away.  Usually I respond by dropping the leash and saying "ok, I'm leaving.  See you later!  Bye!" and when he sees me walking away without him, he realizes he has no choice.  I like that he has wishes and that he makes them so clearly known.

This morning we walked about a mile and a half downhill and he was trotting along next to Sophie, both of them panting a bit in the 77-degree 'heat', but doing just fine a few steps ahead of me.  As soon as he saw that our loop was headed in the uphill direction, he took one look at the massive incline stretched out ahead of him and plopped down on the side of the road.  I laughed, put on my come-on-let's-go-fun-voice and tried jogging a little bit hoping he'd hop up.  He didn't.  He rolled over onto his back.  Two cars stopped to make sure everything was ok.  One driver offered to drive the three of us home.  I declined, insisting that my dog was just being stubborn, and not heat-stroking, dying, or whatever else they must have thought.  As I jumped around excitedly promising cookies and a dip in his pool if he'd just walk up the hill, a third guy stopped, asking if I needed help.  Again, I declined, telling him my dog just didn't want to walk uphill.  "I don't blame him", the driver said.  Sophie jumped around, thinking cookies and a dip in the pool and all of this excitement sounded great.  I physically tried to right Pauly from his reclining position onto his feet.  He flopped back down like a sack of potatoes. Stubborn potatoes.  Then, even though it was 11am, I did the only thing I could think of.  "Pauly, is it dinner time?  Are you hungry?".  Those two magic words, Pauly's favorite words in the English language, did the trick.  He hopped up, chugged his little butt up the big hill, and made it home.  He got a cookie, dinner will have to wait another 7 hours.

When all else fails, photograph the humor of the situation.

 

Ladies and Gents, We Have a Fence!

She doesn't allow leaves in her pool.  Working on fishing every last fleck out.

Pauly the seal

Shake! Shake! Shake!

Enjoying his freedom

The always seem to find more sticks, no matter how many I throw away

Our new fence = Happy Dogs

My love

"Smile!"

Pretty lady

Stalking her brother

My Week in (Crappy Cell Phone) Photos

Enjoying my last days in my neighborhood

"No Dogs Aloud" Ok, I'll make sure he pees silently

A couple taking wedding photos at the cathedral

P-wiggle and I enjoying coffee and Newsweek

The awesome/crazy sculpture at the cathedral

Goodbye cathedral

Girls weekend in DC, driving all the way down with Olivia with windows wide open, hair blowing, and Taylor Swift blasting, getting manicures, shopping, eating, reading, relaxing, catching up with my wonderful aunt and cousin

My "baby" cousin relaxing at Red Door Spa

The difference between a quality manicure and a hole-in-the-wall cheap-o manicure

Moving Day

2 years of my life

Making sure nobody steals or tickets the UHaul

Saying goodbye to their friend, Winston

After loading the truck, a dog and his bed remained

Loaded up and driving home

There was a lot of traffic

Tight squeeze on the front floorwell

There was just so much traffic, I had to entertain myself by taking pictures

It's Monday...

...and rainy, foggy, and gross in NYC.  But this photo cracked me up because it perfectly displays the chaos and fun that is NYC Puppy Class. 

This is less than 1/2 the group.  Aren't you glad we didn't come into YOUR restaurant for lunch? Pups sure are good, though!  The camera ham is the one and only Sophie.

Fred's and Free Loot!

Doggies, mom, dad, and I headed down to Riverside Park this morning and caught the tail end (punny) of the Bark for Life American Cancer Society walk.  Thanks to a tip from Hannah, we scored tons of free loot because they were closing up shop and trying to get rid of extra stuff.  Pauly showed off his "tricks" for people and earned about a hundred cookies and was very proud of himself.  Soph got treats just for being cute.  Pauly wasn't so sure this was fair.

P & S's loot, though guess who carried it around all day?

Then we went to brunch at Fred's, also known as the most awesome brunch spot on the Upper West Side.  The restaurant is named after a released dog from Guiding Eyes for the Blind and they are hands down the most dog-friendly food establishment in NYC (for non-locals, NYC Dept of Health is so strict that you cannot even eat in outside seating with your dog.  It is miserable and absurd and results in very un-dog-friendly living).  I cannot get over how totally, completely awesome they are.  Not the mention some seriously tasty food.  We LOVE Fred's!

We LOVE Fred's!