Graduation!

On Thursday I had the pleasure to attend little Juneau's graduation as a Seizure Response Dogguide. Unfortunately, I had underestimated the time it took to get ready and didn't realize until I had settled in on the train that while the camera was in my bag, my lovely memory card remained plugged into my computer back home. So there aren't any pictures here but be sure to check out Sam's blog for some!

This was a huge night for our school- I think it was the first ceremony to have graduations from all four programs since SRD just recently became its own program separate from SSD. It was also a good night for our POOP group, and our sub-group the Poodles of Doom. Among the 17 grads were Zulu (AmyG's Zoom's sister) and Junie along with poodley Kyara! A large number of the POOP group came out to support those with grads and as usual, it was very good to see many friends I hadn't seen in a long time.

There were many speeches from the trainers, the grads, and the exec director of the school and most of them were pretty funny so I managed not to cry at this grad although it was touch and go for a while there with a few of the grads' speeches. Also, the song to the slideshow was Leann Rimes' Please Remember which reduced many people to tears. The meet and greet afterwards was pretty chaotic due to the sheer number of people but of course everyone had a great time meeting with their puppies and new handlers.

I spent the night at Sam's after a stop for delicious ice cream and got my fill of dogs. I always have fun at Sam's and that night was no exception as we watched House with Wylie and Dallas before sleeping. The next morning was rather interesting as we were awakened by the dogs' slurpy kisses and stepping on our faces. After another episode of House while cuddling with the puppies, we got up and had breakfast and then Sam dropped me off at the Go station.

It was a great grad and althouhgh I'm sad I don't have any pictures, it was fantastic to see Junie and the other dogs again, so happy with their new handlers, looking all grown up in their harnesses/jackets. And just for kicks, so this post isn't completely pictureless, the picture I made Sam's card out of ...

Sam, I know you put a LOT of hard work into raising and training Junie so a huge congratulations on her grad, and of course congrats to Juneau on being an awesome SRD! We wish you and your new handler the best of luck and a long, happy life and partnership together :)

Reunion with the Amys

Last weekend, I finally got the chance to see the Amys again, both of whom I haven't seen since Fielder's grad in February. We had a pretty fun weekend planned- Saturday we went to Woofstock (North America's largest dog festival) and Sunday we attended Toronto's Walk for Autism in support of ADS.

Randomly inserting a picture of Kongo here because he is SO darn cute and always happy. I have decided I am going to steal him forever.

Woofstock was pretty fun, although I guess I would've been more interested had I actually had a dog to scope things out for. It was crazy busy and you could hardly move for the sea of dogs and people. Thankfully, most of the dogs were extremely well behaved and friendly. It was the perfect weekend for a heat wave to hit the city, with record temperatures of 44 degrees (that's 104 fahrenheit). So after a couple hours of sweating through the crowds (sounds gross, but was even grosser living it) we decided to hit up the Eaton's Centre for lunch where the dogs promptly passed out on the cool tiled floors. We stayed there and chatted for quite a while before braving the heat once again. The organizers had set up buckets every few metres for the dogs to stay hydrated, and there was a big public fountain and several kiddie pools set up for the dogs to wade in. We thought the dogs would appreciate them but apparently Ruby and Aspen don't like getting their princessy feet wet ;) Good ol Kongo was splashing around like a real lab though.
Me and Ruby!

Amy and Kongo!Amy and Aspen! The next day we set out early for downtown's City Hall where the walk would be taking place. It turned out to be another scorcher of a day so the Amys and I stayed back at the booth rather than taking the dogs on the walk. Although it wasn't for Dogguides, I really miss doing events so I enjoyed sitting there with the dogs and interacting with the people who came to the booth. (on the TTC) Spencer and Ruby being all cute with their touching paws!

Sadly, at the end of the day it was time for Amy to give Ruby back, but I hear she is already doing superbly in her new home so congrats Amy on raising Ruby and on her placement!! I'm glad I got to meet her before she left :)

Look at that face! Who wouldn't love her?

Again, after the walk we went to the Eaton's Centre to cool down before we hit Woofstock again, this time on a mission to get as many free samples as humanly possible for AmyB. We ended up with a HUGE sack of stuff and I looked ridiculous hauling it into the GO station. Like Santa on crack for puppies. Anyways, it was an uberfun weekend catching up with the Amys and seeing their puppies again! Unfortunately, short of a kidnapping scheme I doubt we'll get to see each other again for quite awhile (thanks for leaving for the entire summer AMY!) so it was a bittersweet weekend.

Amy after eating blue ice cream and looking like a little boy! But I wouldn't want to end my post with this so you all get....Another cute picture of Kongo! What a gorgeous little man he is!

Downtown Adventures Part 2!

Well Sam and I have apparently developed a penchance for walking aimlessly downtown for hours at a time. We must be getting better at it too, because this time after walking for about five or six hours, our legs weren't about to fall off. On this adventure, we first met up with Missy and Kanga (Kongo's sister) since we hadn't seen them in several months. At first the puppies refused to pose nicely ...but that didn't stop us from taking pictures every two seconds so eventually they complied....

Kanga with her paw on Wylie's head- they both thought it was very comfy.

Missy had to leave after lunch but Sam and I trekked on. We hit up Chapters, where we found unusually large crowds and a massive lineup. We decided to be sneaky and went to the upper level to see what was going on. Turns out Rosie O'Donnell was there doing a signing of her new book, so we tried to take the puppies' picture with her from afar. It didn't really work, but she's supposed to be in the crowd of people at the top of the picture.

After that we wandered around downtown for several hours, somehow ending up in Corktown, a district I had never even heard of before. We mistakenly wandered past the humane society and paused for awhile to watch some handlers play with the dogs in their playground. We also found some cool stairs to take the puppies on, and they handled the grated/see-through stairs like champs.

We decided it was hometime then, and saw Sam, Wylie and Boss off at Union station. We've had a pretty good track record this summer- seeing each other once a week four weeks in a row! Hopefully we'll get to have another adventure soon to make up for the eight months during the school year we didn't get to see each other.

Walk for Dogguides

This weekend I went up to Guelph to participate in their Walk for Dogguides and as an added bonus, got to hang out with Sam, Wylie and Boss the whole weekend!

I headed up Saturday afternoon and spent a fun evening with Sam and the dogs just chilling and watching Grey's and talking. We went to McDonalds to grab some food and the cashier was really nice, she asked if we needed help carrying our food since we had Wylie and Boss. In all the times I've had puppies with me at fast food places no one's ever asked me that so I thought that was nice.


I used to have a notebook I kept a list of my favourite dog names in, but it has recently gone MIA so we spent a lot of the weekend thinking up of new names -mostly ridiculous theme litters and names. I think the best theme we came up with was Stores you can see from a Guelph McDonalds, with the puppies names being La Senza, CIBC, Tim Hortons, Chapters and others I forget.

When it came to bedtime, I had to fight off some puppies for bedspace:

But that's one advantage to sleeping on the floor-having the puppies cuddle up with you overnight!

The next morning we got up quite early. Sam tried to wake me up but nothing was effective until Boss decided to lie down on my face. When I couldn't breathe anymore I decided it was maybe time to get moving. Since Sam and I were volunteering, we got to the walk early and helped set up and whatnot. We hadn't expected it would be so cold so instead of just wearing our Dogguides tshirts, we had to put them on over our tshirts and sweaters. Personally I also made sure Boss was leaning against me as much as possible. Fur=WARMTH. Also, I had to give an impromptu speech about fostering which went okay I think (slash hope).

This is the amazing posterboard that Sam made for the walk! Can you find Petey and Fielder?

During the walk I was put on station 2 with one of the Lions Club members and after everyone passed by coming back I was able to walk the last leg of the walk which was fun. Then it was time for prizes- and I won one! Most Unlikely Pair since I'm small and Boss is big!! That was a fun surprise. The best part was watching all the dogs for Best Trick- a cute little golden won it for shake a paw. Here's a picture of one of our former foster puppies showing off her perfect stay:

Afterwards, Sam, Wylie, Boss and I met up with two other foster families at a park where we walked for another hour and a half- lots of walking this weekend! We were quite the sight, five people each with a black lab of varying sizes (Tiny Wylie [sorry Sam!] to huge Quadry). That was fun to catch up with people I hadn't talked to in a very long time. Then we went back to Sam's house and lazed around in a semi-concious state watching House until it was time to catch my train. The dogs were too cute all lying around so I had to take a picture of course:

Dallas, Baloo, Wylie and Boss (Noel was upstairs). For five dogs they sure were a quiet bunch so maybe Sam's not as crazy as I thought taking on a billion dogs :P

I'm so glad I got to spend the whole weekend with Sam as we never get to see each other during the school year and that we had successful weekend of raising several thousand dollars for Dogguides!