It's a BOY!

Well we must be okay folks because Guide Dogs just called to say that not only are we approved but they have for us an 11 week old yellow Lab male named “Rockwell” (from an R litter obviously) and he will arrive here on Friday! Woo hoo! Now we have to put up a fence tomorrow and puppy-proof the house (there will be a distinct “browse line”) and he will be ours for the next year or so. Wow. What a treat. I am thinking we will be calling him Rocky. :)

The fence will be some form of plastic netting and Peter will devise a method of holding it up as well as allowing it to be rolled up when the lawn-mowing guys arrive each Thursday morning. We were at the Home Depot today and saw what they had to offer and we figure we can do the trick tomorrow.

Someone asked me how I got into “puppy walking”. When I first heard of puppy-walking, I was working right beside the Guide Dogs place and heard about their volunteer program. I couldn’t imagine a better-sounding volunteer job than something called “puppy walking”. When I looked into it, I found out that of course, one was a foster parent to a puppy until it became old enough to understand training. One didn’t actually “walk” puppies. And dogs don't understand training until they are at least a year old. They have to be responsible for a blind person after all. So I decided back then I could do this and I got my Uma who I socialized until she was the perfect dog and then she flunked guide dog school. I think she couldn’t handle being alone in kennels (among other complex personality traits!). Anyway, after she passed away on June 16 of this year, we hemmed and hawed and then called Guide Dogs up again and boom! We are getting a puppy in two days.

It is work of course and that puppy does NOT belong to you. And yes, you cry when you give it back for training. But someone needs that dog far more than you ever will. So it’s not so bad.