- A New Face
- It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Labrador!
- The First Day is a Big Day
- Day 2 with the Guide Dog puppy: Moving Fast
- Puppy Tales
- A Big Day 4 (and end of the first week)
- Service Animal Etiquette. Seriously, People.
- The Unseen Fun of a Service Dog’s Life
- Puppy’s First Clicker Session
- Steampunk Puppy: “They call me CAPTAIN Mindy!”
- Resisting Temptation
- Clicker Expo and After
- Mindy is proud.
- Practicing Recalls
- Toronto Training – a service dog in training hits the road
- Puppy Training on a FitPAWS Donut
- Puppy Goes Hiking
- Fireworks Without the Freak-Out
- Training & Gaming at Gen Con
- Assistance Dog Blog Carnival – a Call for Posts
- Perception and Service Dogs
- Recall Roundup
- Goodbye To Mindy
- Mindy: She’s Back!
- Mindy-Penny and the Return to Ordinary Life
Today was the day. I delivered Mindy to Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Mindy had done several kennel stays locally in the last two months, where I paid for extra playtime and stuffed Kongs and all the good things that would make her love staying in kennels, and indeed she was excited to enter the kennel lobby and trotted happily away with staff without ever looking back. This was important to me because I didn’t want her worrying about being left at GDB.
Just before turn-in.
It worked: today she sat for the GDB kennel worker to put on her leash, and then she went straight away with her, walking nicely, ears and tail up, sitting on cue. It was about as painless and stress-free as possible for her. (Me? I was doing fine until the GPS countdown hit single digits. Not gonna lie, I cried. But to be fair, I did more prep work for Mindy.)
I discreetly watched several teams-in-training working on the San Rafael campus. It was neat to see these new partners learning to work together; I saw one team struggle to find the sidewalk’s edge at a pedestrian crossing near my parking space, and then at the other side of the crossing they nailed it, and the man got quite enthusiastic for his dog’s and his success. It was obviously exciting, and that was pretty cool to see.
Training obstacles, both ground and overhead.
They have cute road signs at GDB.
I self-medicated tonight by walking to a local Boathouse Sushi near my hotel. The food is excellent — they have an oyster bar, so I tried that for the first time (the sauce was tasty), and then their clever take on “chips and salsa,” which is a tempura carrot as the base topped with avocado, spicy tuna, and creamy aoli. Yum.
Tomorrow I have to get some work done (aw, man!) and then I hope to explore some local touristy things.
It’s been pretty fascinating, this drive. Just today, for example, I went from high desert to the lush Sonoma Valley, over mountain ranges and through river plains. I went from snowcaps to turning on the car’s AC. The disadvantage of driving alone is that I can’t take photos as I drive, so I don’t have the road trip illustrations I want for this post. (It’s not always safe to pull over to photograph a vista on a twisty mountain road….) But it’s been a really scenic trip thus far. You can follow it on my author blog.
Oh man, you must miss the wee one so much. However, does this mean we could hear the pitter-pat of little puppy feet in the not-too-distant future?
Maaaaaaybe. 🙂 I have no announcement to make at this time, but I have been keeping my eyes open.