Mucho Gusto, Señor Dewey

By Fred
Dewey and I made our first visit to Casa Tina, a very dog-friendly restaurant in Dunedin. Today was the first day of our soon-to-be normal routine, walking up and down Main Street, waiting at the traffic lights and crossing from one side to another.

By the time we get to the restaurant, the puppy is usually tired, and I can eat my lunch in peace. At this age (Dewey's age, not mine), I can hear the whispers from the other tables about what a good little puppy and so on, and I allow myself to feel proud of him, because why not?

A picture of Dewey with his coat. He doesn't want to leave.

Dewey can be so incredibly good and comfortable. He rolls up into a perfectly relaxed little ball, with no awareness of the world, even in a restaurant like this with smells and bits of food on the floor, there he was under the table in perfect shavasana. Considering some of Cheryl's stories about Dewey at school, I wondered if he would want to leave when the time came.

But he did get up. Slowly. And we made our way to the exit. And then he just stopped and sat down a few feet from the door. It was soon clear that he did not intend to be coaxed, happy-voiced, tempted, bribed, nudged, or intimidated to move from that spot. I put a treat on the floor--nothing. A little girl happened to be at the door and she called to him in a sweet little voice, puppy, puppy, here puppy, but he didn't care, not even a little. And he has this look on his face...

So I picked him up and walked out.

No Poo at Dinner!

Last night we took a chance and took the baby out to dinner.  Some nights he doesn't poo until 10 pm, but we have been very vigilant about taking him right out after dinner and then using the commanding voice to see if he will poo and last night we were successful!  Why do I mention specifically a "commanding voice"?

We were told a story at one of our meetings about some veterans in Southeastern's Paws for Patriots program who were working with their assistance dogs and one veteran was listening while another was working with his newly acquired dog.  After listening to him for a bit, he jumped in and said, "Soldier, are you asking your dog or telling him?"

I think about that story a lot.  Mostly because I don't naturally have a commanding voice.  So, I now find myself trying all sorts of different voices when I am out there with Coach because maybe, just maybe, that voice wasn't commanding enough. Perhaps it should be deeper. A bit more stern. No, that didn't work.  How about not so deep, but definitely serious. It's like the actor's studio in our back yard. I should add accents.

OMG.  The nuanced Busy Busy command. Honestly! Coach is my first puppy to mark the distinction between command and normal and happy voices.  He's very smart.

Back to dinner.  We had a 5 pm dog dinner and a 5:10 poo. Woot!  In the real world, people don't talk about poo this much, but in a Southeastern Guide Dog puppy raiser world, poo is very much on our minds: when they last pooped, have they pooped, was it a good poop, etc.  I had no idea I was going to care this much about excrement when I started this gig.

Anyway, since we had our poo, we were good on poo at least for a couple of hours, if not the rest of the evening.  The girls were arriving at 6 and Fred was able to elicit a pee at 5:55 (Fred's commanding voice comes very easily).  Coach is rather like a horse, saving it all up for one tremendously long pee that must be terribly satisfying for him.  Mind you, this is in spite of being taken out and given opportunities to pee. Again, commanding voice or my lack thereof! 

Lauren, Allison, Cheryl and Amber with Casa Tina's in the background.  I have Coach in front of me and have my arms circling him.

So here we are outside of Casa Tina's before our successful dinner outing. Allison's camera has given us a very flattering soft focus, and Coach is a bit of dark blur at the bottom.  But rest assured, he was awesome at dinner and slept through almost all of it.

Taco Night

We took Stephanie and Coastie out for a belated birthday dinner last night.  It was Stephanie's birthday, Coastie still has quite a ways to go until his first birthday. 8-)

Stephanie and Coastie, a yellow lab, pose by the car.  Coastie is sitting by Stephanie's left side.

 We decided to go to our favorite Mexican food restaurant, who just happens to also LOVE our puppies in training: Casa Tina's in Dunedin.

Fred and Jam are waiting for Stephanie and Coastie to join them on the sidewalk.  Jam thinks that Coastie is a wee little thing.

 Fred and Jam have been coming to Casa Tina's for lunch about once a week for months.  So, most of the servers know him.

This photo shows Coastie at the bottom of the photo and Jam at the top lying down under the table. 

The only problem with Casa Tina's is that there isn't a good place for two dogs to lie down.  The quarters are a little tight.  So there was a little bit of the "Mom, he poked his nose over the line!" funny business.  But after awhile, they settled down.  However, Jam remained just a little antsy. A funny kind of antsy.

Jam and Fred walking down the sidewalk with Stephanie and Coastie following.

Sure enough, when we got close to the end of the block, Jam started to show a poo butt.  We yanked his coat off and let him twirl and poo.  Mind you, he had gone after his dinner, so this was a double poo night.  We continued to walk and about a block down, Jam did another twirl.  Off came the coat and he tripled poo'ed.

After Mexican food, even if you are only smelling it, it is advisable to take a good, long walk.

Dodger's in the House!

Dodger arrived yesterday for puppy camp. Puppy camp is where you trade puppies for a week so they can experience a different type of household than what they are normally used to having. Dodger's dad works at home and isn't around kids very much so he wanted Dodger to get to go to school for a week, so we agreed to swap.

Our first event came when we met up for lunch with the two dogs at Casa Tina's, a very guide dog friendly restaurant. After the initial few minutes of energetic stretching to see if they could touch (when they have their coats on they can't interact with each other), they calmed down and ignored each other. Then it was head home, meet Willow and pack up Her Royal Highness!

As you can see in the photo above, this was similar to the scene in the restaurant, very calm dogs ignoring each other. That's what we like! Outside, it was a different story. Dodger is much larger than HRH and had the idea that he would play with Willow. Willow turned and did a matron growl ("young fool, back off now!"), which to his credit he did. So he turned to HRH thinking, "Oh, she's small and female, I can dominate her in a flash."

Yeah, right. Have you met the Queen?

HRH was on him in a flash.

"What?! I've got 20 pounds on you?" It was actually pretty amusing to watch this poor boy get what he was giving out handed right back to plus some. With attitude! (And a little head toss. There might have been some foot stamping as well, I was laughing and might have missed it.)

Many of you may know that we have koi ponds in our backyard. Apparently Dodger didn't get the memo. He fell in. TWICE. I'm tempted to say something about blondes because he did it all within the span of half an hour and the first time he fell in it was while he was drinking out of the pond and staring at himself. I wouldn't want to stereotype him.

In the end, I think Dodger was happy to see her go. What evil plans she has cooked up for John, I hesitate to think about. Good Luck!I crochet. I love yarn. Consequently, some might say I am a yarn harlot and buy too much yarn. Those people will not be receiving lovely yarn creations for Christmas! We immediately discovered that it is very easy to forget that we have trained our dogs not to bother with the yarn when the first thing Dodger did was run over and grab a ball of yarn.

Bad Dodger!
See all the yarn Dodger. Run Dudger, run!

Grab the yarn Dodger!
There is so much to choose from. What color do I want?



There are some things that you can teach in a week and some things that you can't. Yarn no, isn't one of them. Hence, the yarn blockade. Working so far. As for Dodger, he moved on to practice his artful moves.

See Dodger on the stairs?

See the chairs at the bottom of the stairs?

Somehow, Dodger got through the chair blockade and up the stairs. Clever boy, making my earlier blonde comment so much stereotyping balderdash. I'm going to have to keep a close eye on this one.