Birthday Girl!

Today was Carrie's Birthday!!
And boy oh boy did she have a big day!

Her birthday celebrations actually started yesterday.  She works at two places (The school and the hospital) so she got to have TWO parties!

We made a poster to put up at the hospital letting them know they could come get a cookie. Compliments of Carrie of course :)

Everyone loves Carrie at the hospital so when they heard that it was her birthday she was given lots of extra love.  One of my mom's friends took her out for a super long walk and made her wear her birthday hat (:

Then, today I took her to school and- even though it was dumping rain and she was wearing a rain coat instead of a party hat- all of the kids wished her happy birthday.

And THEN (as if that wasn't enough) we went to a puppy meeting and brought cake for everyone to share!

I can't believe she is a year! These past 10 months have gone by incredibly fast! I can't wait to see what is in store for her in the future- whatever it may be. But I must say, I am NOT ready for turn in! I love this dog sooo much!

A New Year and New Puppies!

I Would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year's Eve!

I hope everyone else has had as great of a year as I have!

To kick off the New Year our club has welcomed 2 new puppies!

Introducing...

Male Black Lab, Lipton!

Lipton is the first puppy for his new raisers. He will also be going to the same school as me! Yay! He will be too young to come to school for quite a while though...

But it is always exciting for me when new people start raising at my school.  When I started raising I was the only guide dog raiser there. Now there are up to 6 raisers at the school at one time!

And Margueri, a female golden retriever!

Our group also raised 2 of Margueri's half siblings.

Sabrina:

And Schafer

 (I don't have a picture of him, Sorry).



Unfortunatly they were both Career changed for Hip Dysplasia :(

I hope miss Margueri has no similar problems!

To a new year with new puppies!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Carrie Meets Santa

We took Carrie to get her picture taken with Santa yesterday! I picked the picture up today and boy is it cute! She is sitting kinda funny and I think it captures a little bit of her dorky-ness.

Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Tradition

Every year at Christmastime we make an ornament for our tree.  We use Plaster of Paris and create a mold of our dogs' paw.  Here's how Carrie's turned out this year:

Here is Hanalei's from last year:

And Fairfield's from 3 years ago:

(Tisha's, unfortunately, was lost)

It has been really fun seeing the differences in their paws.  Hanalei had the biggest paws of any of my puppies!  I hope someday I will be able to get another one made for Tisha.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium

So over the Thanksgiving Break we took Carrie to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  It was really good for her and we had fun doing all of the little kiddie things with her!

They have this really neat place where you can push buttons that make noises of whales and seals.  Carrie thought this was very interesting and we thought it was hilarious. 

There was also a cave-type thing where water rushes over you every couple of seconds.  At first she was really interested in the swirly water. 

After a few moments of this, a toddler came up to her.  She sat while he petted her and then he suddenly pulled his binky out of his mouth and tried to give it to her!  She was a good girl and refused it but it was pretty cute.

Overall it was a perfect outing for her.  It was fairly crowded, had lots of small children and had a lot of things she had never seen before.  There was an adorable penguin that followed her around for a while.  We couldn't get Carrie to pay attention to it but the penguin deffinately did!

Thanksgiving Break!

Over Thanksgiving break we went to Monterey to spend time with our family.  While we were there Carrie was able to spend a lot of time with a bunch of little kids.  There were 6 kids between the ages of 2 and 8.  She was really really good with them.  The babies were super intersted in her.  They would go to give her a kiss and open their mouths like little kids do :).

She was very well behaved and was allowed to be off leash in their house.  During dinners she politely kenneled under the table and stayed there until she was told to it was okay to come on out.

We also had to the chance to take her to the Monterey Bay Aquarium but I will be posting about that later.

Back to school...

Carrie and I started back to school yesterday!  We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and will be posting about what we did over the break within the next couple of days!

Christmas Trees and New Puppies!

Every year our puppy club decorates a christmas tree on the highway in our area.  Each puppy raiser decorates an ornament for their dogs.  Our whole group then gets together and decorates the tree!



The finished product!

While we were there I was able to snap some pictures of one of our newest members, Dover!



A little blurry but such a cutie!

We have another puppy that joined us recently but I forgot my camera!  He is a male yellow lab named Wes.  He is his raisers' first puppy!  Hopefully I will be able to get some pictures next time I see him.

So Super Busy!

This past week has been incredibly busy for Carrie and me!
We have been doing SO much! And it's only going to get more hectic as we get into the holidays!

Last Friday, Carrie came with me to school where she went to another rally!  She dressed in her lime green and behaved herself beautifully!

After school, we went home for about an hour, then went to a guide dog meeting and then directly after that we went and saw Disney on ice!  She was wonderful during the performance as well.  She slept the whole time- she had to have been tired after having such a busy day.

The day after that, Saturday, we helped out at a fundraiser for a friend of ours at whole foods.  I was in charge of making balloon animals (which popped alot!).  Carrie handled this fine as well.  The first pop woke her up but after that she learned to ignore them.  She was also exposed to a ton of small children who came to the event.  While we were there, I painted a pumpkin for her:

On Sunday we tried to take it a little easy but I still took her out for some traffic work.  We walked to Apple Hill next to the backed up traffic.  It was great for her to get used to the smells of the traffic while it was moving slowly. 

Fairfield Update!

My first puppy, Fairfield, graduated as a guide over a year and a half ago.  Since Halloween is coming up they posted a picture of him in his halloween costume on facebook!

Fairfield the bucking bronco!

Happy almost Halloween!