After She Walks Away

It used to be that In For Training meant drop your puppy off, cry, and go home. But no more. SEGD has taken great pains to make this day into something more. Something much more special. A celebration of the year we've worked and a celebration of the puppy and the mission of the school. They really don't want it to be a sad event.

So, as soon as there was a group of us who had done the leash exchange, there was a happy volunteer to escort us over to the puppy kennel where they were going to bring out the puppies for us to hug.


They brought Mom out one of the donated yellow lab puppies. He was ginormous!



Fred was a puppy magnet as well.


Even I got to hug some puppies! It was surprisingly helpful in making the tears go away. It's hard to be sad and cry when you are petting a puppy.

And even better, we got to see our next puppy! Joseph A. Merluzzi, to be known as JAM! Here is asleep. He's the big fat yellow one in the center.



Isn't he cute!

After the puppy hugging, we heard from guide dog users about how their guide dogs had changed their lives. We also received something from Titus (which I won't tell, so it won't spoil the surprise for the other raisers). Then we did a blind walk with some of the dogs in training which was super cool! I'll have a video of that for you in the next post I hope!

We pick up JAM on July 1, 2011. He's sure to be a pistol. Keep posted for all the news!