Fall Colors

Photo by Carol Smalley

Barbara is almost nine months old now. She's gotten a lot bigger since the last update! She now weighs about 55 lbs. She's been getting a lot of compliments on how beautiful and how well-behaved she is. Her responses to commands and people greetings are getting a lot better now too.

However, she's fascinated with all of the new autumn smells, so loose lead walking is a challenge right now. Otherwise she's making a lot of progress!

Barbara Works with a New Person

Photos by Carol Smalley

Barbara got to work with a new person, Jody, for this week's class. Jody is a Guiding Eyes puppy sitter for our region. She'll be taking care of Barbara for us for a week soon. Puppy sitters have to go through the same training as the puppy raisers so that everyone involved with the raising of the puppies knows the proper commands and house rules.

The class was focused on keeping a connection with the teams of handlers and puppies.

For our next class, we'll have a more formal one on one session, kind of like a Walk and Talk, to make sure Barbara is where she needs to be in her training and development right now.

New Collar!

Barbara has officially outgrown her collar from Guiding Eyes, so she just got a new green collar.

She is getting BIG.

Class with Another New Pup

This is the newest pup in the region, Gifford. He's a German Shepherd that's about nine weeks old now.

Barbara and me relaxing in the shade

ML (our Regional Manager who runs classes) working with Barbara

All photos by Carol Smalley

In today's class, the raisers had to pretend that they were in a park and keep their dogs' attention on them. Barbara didn't seem to be as distracted by the other dogs as she has been in the past, but she was also worn out from playing beforehand. I think she's definitely making progress. (If nothing else, she's growing up fast!)

Tiring Out the Puppies

Practicing "Heel"

Barbara was tired for this week's class, so she needed some extra coaxing to do some of the commands (little pieces of boiled chicken, a really high value treat). But even if she hadn't been tired, she seems to be settling down during class times a little more. She didn't bark once during class this week!

Why was she so tired? She played hard with her siblings and their friend Jean before class began:

(No Barbara in that photo, but it was too cute not to share!)

All photos by Carol Smalley

Working with Different Puppies

Me working with Jean

Baxter's raiser working with Barbara

Me and Barbara

Photos by Carol Smalley

All of the raisers had to swap puppies today during class so that we could get used to working with different dogs and the dogs could get used to working with different people.

Memorial Day Parade!

Photos by Carol Smalley

Barbara got to watch a parade tonight! She was very good and got exposed to a lot of different things.