Phase 1!

Spike is finally in phase 1! I am now at ease, knowing that he is actually finally starting the training.

Apparently Spike wasn't technically in phase 0 until 9/10. So he was showing up as being in phase 0 on the 9/2 and the 9/9 phase reports, when he wasn't.. I guess he wasn't even at the Oregon campus at that time? Or he was recovering from his neuter? I didn't fully understand what my leader said. I pretty much stopped listening after she said the CFR said Spike would be in phase 1 this week. haha

Just because I am so happy right now, here are a few pictures of Spike.

Here he is at puppy meeting a few months before recall.

We were taking a walk along the canal. We had to get to the other side of it, but there were no bridges. So we crossed the big metal pipe thing. I didn't think we would have any problems, but I got so dizzy looking down at the stationary pipe with the water moving below it. I thought I would fall in haha. Spike did fine, though.

Spike at Antelope Island less than a week before recall. There is a bison in the background, but he was more interested in the people to his right.

Spike at Antelope island again. This was after we were done playing in the Great Salt Lake. If you look carefully, you can see the salt crusted on his fur. I'm curious to see what black Clyde would look like after a dip in the Salt Lake.

Mini Hike

Today, my family went for a short little .6 mile hike round-trip to Grotto Falls in Payson Canyon. It was a lot of fun, and the perfect first hike for Clyde.
My cousins tagged along, and one of them took a bunch of pictures for us. :)


Here is me and Clyde at the beginning of the hike.


Clyde in the fall leaves


Clyde sitting on a tree stump.


Here is Clyde on a little mini bridge across a creek.


Clyde and I on the mini bridge. He wasn't a big fan of it.


So instead of trying to get him to walk forward on them, I let him walk in the creek below while I walked across.


Here he is navigating his way through some rocks.


And here he is in the water at the Grotto.


Here is me, my sister, my dad and Clyde leaning against a fence at the end of the hike.

Clyde by himself, putting his paws up on the fence. :)

And here he is, tied up to the fence while we took some pictures of just the humans.

It was a fun, short hike. My brothers and my little cousins had fun running up and down the trail, and Clyde thoroughly enjoyed exploring the mountains for the first time. He thinks he's a mountain dog now!

When we got home, I put Clyde in the tub to rinse off the dirt from his legs and tummy. When we were going down the stairs after his bath, he decided to try to randomly dash down the stairs, and as a result, I was pulled forward and down. I landed on my already-damaged ankle*, and I am now wearing a splint. yay!

*In March 2009, I was riding a green-broke horse. The horse spooked and threw me. I landed on my ankle and thought I had broken it. So my mom picked me up and took me to the emergency room, where I had an x-ray. There were no broken bones, so they called it a sprained ankle, gave me a splint, and sent me on my way. A week later, it was still hurting like crazy, still very swollen, and I had a VERY hard time walking on it. So I went to my regular doctor. He took an MRI and said that I had torn all the ligaments in my ankle (also called a 3rd degree sprain). He said that torn ligaments often hurt more and take longer to heal than broken bones. He also said that it can sometimes cause permanent instability. He gave me an ankle-foot boot and sent me home.
Ever since then, my ankle gets sore when I take long walks without breaks (about 3 miles+), it gets sore when I ride horses (which is why I don't do it nearly as often anymore). And also, as a result of this injury, my right ankle is slightly larger than my left (I'm assuming it's scar tissue?), and wearing closed-toed shoes is sometimes slightly uncomfortable. (Which is why I wear flip-flops all the time, weather and activity permitting)
A month and a half after all this, I went to my first puppy meeting. :)

School and puppy meeting

On Wednesday morning (9/22/10) Clyde and I went with a fellow raiser to her daughter's Junior High for a little presentation about Guide Dogs and puppy raising. We only had Kyle (who was borrowed), Christina and Clyde there, and there were about 40 kids.
After we talked about all the general stuff about puppy raising, we spit into groups where we let the kids pet and ask questions about the puppies.
One girl asked if we could play fetch with the puppies. I said "No" and explained that when they are working guide dogs, they can't be tempted to chase a ball they might see while they are working. So I took out the tug toy from my bag, and showed them how to play. I ended up letting each kid play tug with Clyde for a few seconds, having them tell him "That's enough" when their turn was up (Clyde actually dropped it about 80% of the time, I was quite amazed).
Clyde did really well overall. He was really distracted when people were trying to pet him, but after I told the kids not to pet him, he did great. I'm tempted to print out and laminate a sign that says "PLEASE DON'T PET" and pin it onto Clyde's vest. It's annoying and rude when people pet him without asking (which is about 80% of the time, unfortunately).
I sadly did not get any pictures of Clyde in the school, but here is a picture of me and Clyde in front of the school after the presentation.


On the same day, a few hours later, we had puppy meeting at Home Depot. We started off by walking them around the parking lot, walking them over a few grates, etc. We traded puppies, I had Julimae, and went inside. We walked by and around various people, ladders, carts, power tools, lights, plants, etc. Home Depot is a great place for them to experience new sights and smells.
At the end of the meeting, we sat in a circle in Home Depot and chatted a bit about our puppies and what they have been up to.

Clyde enjoyed himself. :)







And finally, here is a picture of Clyde on the bed I made for him with some of his toys. He looks so spoiled in this photo.

4 weeks?

4 weeks in phase 0? Are you serious?
If they were going to keep him in phase 0 this long, why not just let me keep him a bit longer?
This is getting to be a bit ridiculous.

4 things at 4 months

Today is Clyde's 4 month day! I can't believe he is already 4 months old!

Here are 4 things about Clyde:
1. He LOVES going places. He gets upset if I go somewhere without him.
2. He hasn't had any accidents in public... yet.
3. His favorite command is "Let's go"
4. He used to bark just to hear himself.. now he only barks when he needs to potty or when I leave the room. Yay for improvement!

No pictures today. The drive my photos are saved to crashed. :(


On another note, it is 11:00pm and I still haven't gotten the phase report, and honestly, I'm quite upset because of this. And I have a feeling I won't be getting it until tomorrow at the earliest.
Maybe one of my fellow bloggers can send it to me?

Play day!

Because Clyde has been so good this last week, I decided to take him on a relaxing outing up the canyon. We went on a short walk around a reservoir, waded in the water and watched the ducks.


Here is Clyde with the reservoir behind him.


Down closer to the water.





Wading in the water.


After our trip to the reservoir, I got a call from my friend, asking if I would like to bring Clyde over to her house to let our pups play.
I said" heck yes!" and immediately drove over.

She has a 6 month old Lab named Cooper, who is the same color as Spike, and every time I saw him from the corner of my eye, I thought he WAS Spike. It was weird. :)
She also has a 7 year old Jack Russell named Eddie, and a 6 month old Yorkie named Joey.

When we arrived, we did not get such a friendly greeting from her dogs. They were all growling and were not happy to see us. My friend was in shock, and said they had some other friends' dogs over earlier and they were just fine. So for the first half hour or so, I held Clyde in my lap while the other dogs investigated him.
Eventually my friend put her Yorkie and Jack Russell in the house, and held onto her Lab while we let Clyde run around on his own.


It seemed that since the two small dogs were in the house, Cooper warmed up to Clyde easier, and was friendly enough to let the two of them run around together. They had a blast!


After another 30 minutes, we decided to see if the two small dogs would accept him, now that Cooper had. And.. just like magic, they did. Joey the Yorkie really started to love Clyde, while Eddie the Jack Russell just tolerated him.

Here are a few pictures of them playing together.






Cooper stole Clyde's nylabone! Rude!

Clyde and Joey became best friends! The last hour or so I was there, they were inseparable, and I hated taking Clyde away from his new friend.









Here are Clyde, Eddie and Cooper.





They were beginning to tire out, and kept laying down together, then after a quick breather, one of them would pounce up and they would starting running around again. Clyde is about to jump up in this photo.

And here is Joey jumping up after a short break. I love how you can see the surprise on Clyde's face.

Joey wanting Clyde to keep playing. :)



It has been a really fun day, and Clyde is totally worn out, and has been sleeping since we got home.
I hope we can get our pups together again sometime soon!

Can't sleep.

It is 5AM, and I have not been able to sleep.

It's strange.. the first few days Spike was gone, I felt very sad. Then I was feeling better (still missing him to the extreme, of course), and now I'm feeling empty again. I can't stop thinking about Spike. Maybe it's because it appears he hasn't made any progress since he got there.. I don't know.

I kinda wish GDB would do the same thing other schools do. Send out report cards with specifics on what the dog is doing, what the dog needs to work on, personal comments from the current handler, etc. (Is it CCI or maybe GDA that does that? I don't remember for sure)

Am I allowed to call and ask how Spike is doing? haha

Excuse me, but I'm gonna go give Clyde a squeeze now.

Still in phase 0?

Spike is still in phase 0, and HAS been for 3 weeks now.. anyone know any reason it would take this long for him to move up to phase 1? Or is it like Stephanie guessed.. maybe the Oregon campus is delayed in updating the phase reports?
Either way, it's making me nervous, and slightly aggravated.

Wordless Wednesday

Clyde is legal!

Clyde got his 3rd set of shots this morning, and is now officially legal!

He did great in the vet's office. The vet tech commented on how calm he was, which made me happy. He wasn't a big fan of the thermometer in his rear end, but didn't put up a fuss. And he didn't even notice the shots.Here he is in the vet's office, waiting for the vet to bring his shots.


And here he is sitting on the table. At first, he didn't know what to do and was sliding all over the place. I had to hold him there for a few seconds for him to finally realize that if he sat still, he wouldn't slide off. As you can see in this picture, he is still unsure of what to think.

After he got his shots, we went to Macey's grocery store to get some ice cream. I remembered that Macey's was one of Spike's first outings, and he did really well.
Clyde was AMAZING in Macey's. Sure, he was distracted by the smells of the store and what not, but that is to be expected. He sat patiently while we stood in line, waiting to get some ice cream at the deli. And when I got my ice cream, we sat down at one of the tables, and he settled right down and laid on the floor. It's like he already knows what to do! (Or he was just really tired, which is a possibility)

I tried to take a picture of Clyde similar to one that I took of Spike at Macey's.

Here is Spike at Macey's Yes, he is freaking adorable.


And here is Clyde, who is also freaking adorable. Although.. I like Spike's picture better. It's a pain to get any decent pictures of Clyde. My camera doesn't want to auto-focus on him (especially indoors), and I'm guessing it's because he's a black dog. I would manual-focus, but the peek hole on my camera has a bunch of dust or something in it, so it's hard to tell if it's in focus or not, and there is no view on the digital screen. Does anyone else seem to have issues photoing black dogs?

And here is another picture of him laying down while I ate my ice cream. :)
He is in a medium vest. The small was too small for him!


After Macey's, we went to Walmart, where he was also good. I unfortunately forgot to take the camera with me.
He actually started squatting in Walmart, and was about to go #2. But I freaked out, and probably scared him a bit and he stopped. He was able to hold it in long enough for us to run outside for him to do his business. I didn't even have to carry him out. He was able to hold it on his own. :) Spike wasn't able to hold it in at this age. If it started coming out, there was no stopping it. haha sorry for that visual.

We went home after Walmart to take a little break. Clyde took a nap and I got myself lunch. After a few hours, I decided to let Clyde explore the backyard a bit, and he really seemed to enjoy it. He spent about the first 25 minutes sniffing everything, and the last 15 minutes or so running around.

Here are a few photos of him in the backyard. :)
Here he is with my dogs, Jake (Boxer) and Shelby (Aussie).







Here he is, all tired after the romp in the yard.

After another 3ish hour break, I took him to Heritage park by my house.





These last two pictures were also supposed to be similar to ones I took of Spike at this same park.
Clyde:
Spike:



Clyde:

Spike:



I'd say it's been a pretty successful day. He's been a really good boy, and I can't wait to take him to even more places. :)