Happy Halloween!

Don is enjoying his first Halloween! He is now 51/2 months and has had a very busy week. Two saturdays ago, we swapped Don for Peeka, a female black lab being raised in our club. Peeka was a very sweet dog, and such a people lover! Here is a picture of the pretty girl:

It's hard to tell in these photos, but she is a very petite girl. When we got Don back, he seemed even bigger than before. He's 48 lbs at 5.5 months! I know these are terrible pictures :) Just as I was rushing out the door to swap back dogs, I remembered that I'd taken no photos of Peeka. I just had to have something to remember this sweet girl by- even if it was two blurry photos with crazy eyes :D

Peeka was so much fun. She loved to please more than anything. Unlike Don, she loved interactive play. Her whole body would start wriggling when I got down on the floor with her. Don is more of an aloof sort of guy. I wouldn't exactly say that pleasing me is his top priority :) Does anyone know how to get a more "distant" dog to enjoy play? I know I can't change his personality, but want to make sure he realizes how positive human interaction is.

On Thursday, Don went to Guide Dogs for the Blind (CA campus) for the day. The community field representatives were making a film about the food induced recall and needed some pups from our group. I haven't seen the movie yet, but heard that the filming went really well. It will probably take a while for the video to get distributed to all the clubs. I'm really hoping that Don is the demo dog for "what to do if your dog doesn't come"! He hasn't been quite that stellar with his come as he used to be, but were working on it. Spending the day at GDB seemed to help. When we picked him up from the kennels, the staff told us that he seemed intimidated by the kennels/ noise/ other dogs. I was quite surprised as he's never had any confidence issues before (overconfidence- yes). Hopefully he'll be over this when he goes back for formal training.

Don had his evaluations Wednesday. Since Don is such a big puppy (and potentially dominant) a eval was needed just to spot any issues before they got bigger. It was very helpful and Don did REALLY well. In the end, we concluded that his main issue would be distractions and were put on a food protocol. Apparently, Don's father, Bosworth, was also a very distracted pup at Don's age. I am running off to carve pumpkins and decorate the house. I will talk more about the eval and post photos later. Happy Halloween!