Vortex made it into Community Connections!

My little favorite made it into the GDB Community Connections newsletter! I sent in the picture of him at school, and Sarah loved it, so now he’s famous. 🙂

You can see it here: http://www.guidedogs.com/site/DocServer/comm-conn-2008-dec.pdf

In other news, I’m puppy-less, but still thinking Tianna should be here. I got home from the mall today and almost went to my room to get her out of the crate. 😦 But it’s kind of nice at the same time. No 7am breakfast anymore!!

I don’t have any immediate puppy-sitting on the horizon, because apparently I didn’t scoop her little business fast enough for my parents, so I don’t get a puppy this month. (it was supposed to be for the month of Feb, but since Tianna left early I think I can do a Feb pup). I’m pretty sure I’m getting Festival in March. But I apparently need to go to meetings more often. It’s been really hard since my parents go to evening church which is exactly when our meetings are. But I’m working something out with my leaders. They want me to come more often, and I want to come more, too!! I always feel a little left out when I do go to meetings because we have a ton of new people who I don’t know. And they’re always handling puppies to get more experience. Since I don’t NEED to handle puppies, I let them do it all. The other weird thing is that all these new families (there are 3 or 4!) only know me as a puppy-sitter. They have no idea about the 3 pups I’ve raised. *sigh* I feel so ordinary. lol.

Adios Chiquita

Well it looks like Tianna will be leaving today. Sadly. We were originally going to take her home Sunday, but when I thought about it, her raisers are home, and I really wanted to sleep in on Saturday. So I suggested Friday, but her raiser is meeting with a new family on Friday, so she’s leaving today. 😦

As much as she’s been a lot of hard work and required quite a few hours of training, I love her and will miss her a lot. She’s learned a lot and it’s always great to see a dog go from a puppy who does everything wrong to a little older dog who knows what to do, but still does almost everything wrong. 😉

Yesterday we trekked up to McDonalds for lunch and of course “little T” came with us. She has such a hard time with people that I didn’t expect her to do very well. But we walked in and after a few corrections, she did fantastically well. I was very happily surprised! So after that outing I’m sad to see her go. There’s so much potential…. *sigh*

Here are some pictures of Chiquita in our Santa Hat…

Tianna says THAT's where the hat should ALWAYS be...

 

And some pictures of just the cute little girlie.

Right now, she’s just sitting by my feet. She always loves to be with you wherever you are. If she’s in your lap, she’s happy. I’m gonna miss this girl!!! BUT once school starts again……Vortex will probably start his school visits again. Except he can’t come Tuesdays and Thursdays because I’ll be playing volleyball…

Commands

Tianna’s been learning her commands this week, because since she’s so smart, she always needs mental stimulation. So we videoed her commands today. 😛 She’s still learning, and we use a few leash cues (especially on “down”) but she’s pretty good considering she’s 17 weeks.

Sit

Down

That’s Enough, Wait, and Ok

Wait, Ok

Sit, Stay, Come

Down, Stay, Come

Snow Day

Here she is…snow pictures!! My camera is stupid and the flash won’t work, but I’ll post the ones that are relatively non-blurry.

We’re still working on not eating the snow. But since it’s finally melting here, I’m hoping it won’t be necessary for too long. Still snowed in. But we did go on a walk today. Ti was so excited, and we slipped half of the time, but it was great for her to get out.

Winter Wonderland

I suppose I should update. Life’s been VERY slow here. We’ve been snowed in for almost a week, and I hate it. So does Tianna. We stil have about a foot of snow, but my dad put chains on our car, and we’re going to venture up to the grocery store so that I can get the rest of my Christmas presents and Tianna can have an outing, her first in over a week. We discovered that if she eats too much snow, she gets really runny stools. SO, no snow for little Tianna!!!

She’s a sweet girl. Many a night she will curl up in my lap and we’ll watch a movie. She’s still working on not mouthing, and whining’s been interesting (when she’s on the tie-down), but over all she’s great. Spends a lot of time loose in my room or on tie-downs in other parts of the house.

I really do need to get some pictures with her, especially ones in the snow. But she’s so wiggly it’s hard. And I hate snow. So put them together, and it’s been a challenge to be motivated enough to get out the camera and the dog at the same time. But here are some from inside:

I take it back. I do have ONE good picture of her in the snow….

Cold

Well we have had snow!! Ugh. I hate snow. It’s too cold. 🙂 Tianna loves it!! She loves trying to eat it I should say. Do you guys let your puppies eat snow?

Tianna has been pretty good. She doesn’t know what to do with herself when she’s on tie-down and usually ends up staring at us and whining a little. Not playing with the toys, of course. *sigh*

She’s tons better on outings though. If we take it somewhat slow, she seems to get it. We end up stopping every two seconds to calm her down, but she “gets it” and is a whole TON better about garbage mouthing on outings. In the house it’s still hard, but she’s better when she’s out.

I have a friend who is an amazing photographer and she took some pictures of Tianna and I yesterday. I’ll get those posted when I get the CD today.

Meet Tianna

Well she’s here. Miss Tianna came this morning. She came early so that she could go visit my old school with me (not such a great idea). My initial impression: she has a lot of energy and will be a somewhat difficult puppy as she gets older. Let’s just say I’m glad she’s not with first-time raisers.

She’s ADORABLE and would melt anyone’s heart, though. At 16 weeks, she’s not doing TOO bad. Her biggest things right now are walking nicely on leash, getting excited, and mouthing. But those are all pretty normal 16-week puppy things. I’m looking forward to introducing her to puppy bootcamp. *cough* I mean, Anna’s house.

Introducing….

And here you thought that meant I was getting a puppy. 🙂 I’m so mean aren’t I?

Well if you thought I was getting a pupper, you’re partly right, and partly wrong. So I suppose I should start with the non-guide dog part of the news, or you won’t read it :D…

So here’s the story… I was checking all the blogs on my blogroll which I try to do every other day, and I saw this post buy another GDB puppy-sitter. That sparked one of those “Oh!” moments. And I remembered I was saving up for a laptop. Well I decided to check out the one I was looking at, to make sure they still had the right model, etc.

So when I checked that, I also noticed it happened to be on sale. Big deal. Laptops often go on sale. Well this one was $300 less than normal. So all with that and the fact that I don’t have to pay car insurance after all, I decided to get this:

The Sony Vaio Breast Cancer Edition……and it’s pink 😀

So that’s what I’m typing off of right now. It’s lovely.

But now I’m working on the “transfer everything from my parent’s computer to this computer” slow process.

SO to guide dog news…..

Let me introduce you to the little lady who will be gracing my house from December 11th (ish) to January 5th…

My first impression is that she looks remarkably like Fullerton. They’re not immediately related, but they still look similar!

Tianna

So this is Tianna. She’s 11 weeks right now, so she’ll be around…. 4 months when she comes to visit with me. I didn’t do the math, so I’m probably a little off. Her raisers said I could have her as long as I wanted, and so I’m taking them up on that and will have her my entire Christmas break!!! I’m thrilled. You have no idea. She’s still not “my” puppy, but for all intensive purposes, when people are asking about her, I’ll probably say she is another starter puppy. 🙂

That’s my news. 😀

Oh, and I don’t know if I ever officially announced that one of our club members, Bono, is in class. But he is. And he’s graduating on Saturday, for anyone making it to the Boring grad. 🙂

The Bad News…

Well, it looks like no more starter pups for little ‘ol me. Our CFR wants the starter raisers to work with them for longer than a month, and that’s just not possible for me. So sadly, I’ll have to say goodbye to my dream of having one last starter pup. Too bad, because my parents almost said yes, too. 😦

 

However, I was talking to my leader and they said I could puppy-sit one of our new puppies, Tianna, over December. The raisers have a lot going and they would love to have me watch her.

I really wish I could have raised a starter, though. My only motivation for raising starters isn’t that I get glory for a graduate. Lawrence’s graduation, and the pain I went through, would prove to anyone that it’s not about getting to say “I raised a guide dog”. I just love having a puppy that’s “mine”–even if it is for just a month–rather than watching a dog that’s someone else’s. I don’t GET to do another full-time puppy until I graduate, so my starters are my compromise. They’re “mine” but not “all mine” which is good for my parents and me.

Does that mean I won’t puppy-sit Tianna? Absolutely not. I might actually have a better chance to puppy-sit her (rather than get a starter puppy), because my parents are more welcome of puppysittees than starter pups. I hope I can have her (or someone else) for Christmas….I’ve had a puppy every Christmas for 3 years– Arturo, my boy, Bradford, a puppy-sittee, and Pomona, my 2nd starter pup. So anyway. This is a really long and disjointed post.

I’m going to call Tianna’s raiser and find out exactly when she would want me to puppy-sit. I don’t want to take her away from her family while they want her. I definitely don’t want to ask to have her for Christmas, because I know that’s a special holiday for a lot of families and having their pups with them is important. I know I wouldn’t have shipped Artu off to a puppy-sitter for Christmas, for anything. So I’m not exactly sure WHAT to do right now. My leader is also e-mailing all the other raisers to see if anyone is going out of town and needs a sitter. But right now we have a lot of brand new people who want to puppy-sit.

I love brand new people, and I love that they want to puppy-sit, but I don’t think they’ll ever understand how much I want to puppy-sit until they’ve raised a gorgeous dog and given it away. And then been told they can’t raise again. (except for starter pups) So I don’t know…Dang I want my own puppy again. SO BAD. I’d even take this one back again…..

(by the way, her 2nd raisers saw her at the Oregon Fall Luncheon, and her current raisers said she’s doing great…. :D)

So will I puppy-sit Tianna? Probably. Yeah. Why not. I just really want my own puppy again.

Love your babies for me.

 and congrats on making it all the way to the end of my whining-post.