New Year's Eve @ SFO

Silky took Jim to the San Francisco airport on New Year's Eve to meet Jeff and Leslie's plane. Jim parked in the huge parking garage, then he and Silky walked through all the cars, across pedestrian bridges, maneuvered through crowds, rode the tram to the terminal and finally settled in next to the baggage carousel.

Silky takes it all in stride. What a girl! She's maturing quickly and is basically unflappable on outings.

Silky's 14-month birthday was December 24th and her 1st anniversary living with us was the day before that. We had a lot to celebrate during Christmas week. Here's a picture from 12/23/09, when I picked her up from the San Rafael campus.

It's fun to look back over this past year and see Silky's progress - both physically and in terms of her behavior. And even though she's becoming such a lady, she still has her puppy-clown moments -- plenty of them.

Sinclair goes home for Christmas

Word is that little Sinclair left San Rafael this afternoon with his new family. Best wishes to all for a successful transition and long life together.

Someone's been sleeping in my bed!

Silky came home today after a hiatus of nearly 4 weeks. She left home on Nov. 8 in a puppy swap with Stefano. She came into season on her swap-back day, so she went directly to the GDB campus instead of coming home.

While she was out, a lot of visitors came through "her" house -- some with two legs (Jeff, Leslie, Cyndi, Kitt, and 5-year-old Charles); some with four legs (Stefano, Griffen and Sinclair). The four-legged guys walked on Silky's floor, laid down on her carpet, hung out in her crate, chewed on her toys and one of them even slept on her bed. And I didn't even have to explain all this to Silky -- she figured it out all by herself. Sniff, sniff, sniff.

Hmmm. Charles? Yep. (sniff sniff) 

Griffen? Yep. (sniff sniff)

Stefano? Yep. (sniff sniff sniff - Hi, brother.)

And . . . (sniff sniff . . . sniff sniff . . . sniff . . . .) who else? A strange puppy? (sniff sniff sniff) SINCLAIR!

 

Yummmmm -- my old watering hole.

Back in my own bed, boss of my own toys.

All except the kong that escaped over the edge of the deck, into the bushes below.

Silky's coming home !!!!

I just heard -- Silky's first season has come to an end. Finally!
I'll pick her up tomorrow just after lunch. YAY!!

Welcome home, Silky. We're awfully excited you're coming home.

Mr. Sinclair and our puppy club

Sinclair is a 5 month old puppy, career-changed for medical reasons. He had 3 operations very early in his life and has grown up living on the Guide Dog campus. Since he needs experiences living with people in their homes and since we're puppy-less until Silky comes home, we fostered Sinclair for 4 days. He's a smart, engaged puppy and learned things very quickly.

And, as you can see, he's very handsome. We're hoping he gets adopted soon.

It turns out that Sinclair is Snickers's brother. Snickers is one of the chocolate puppies from the Forte/Arizona litter born on 6/08/10. You can see Snickers on Megan's blog: http://megansgdbpups.blogspot.com

Sinclair went with us to our puppy club meeting last Saturday and was able to accompany all the puppies to a retirement home. The puppies were a hit. Sinclair was quite a gentleman and licked people's hands very gently.

Nougat gets a double belly rub.

Quebec is on the left and Ava is in the middle of the photo.

Quebec sitting nicely while Carol talks with a resident.

Stefano's visit

We had a great time puppy sitting Stefano. It was surprising to discover how similar he and Silky are --both in personality and appearance. He's more grounded and less aloof than Silky, which we enjoyed for a change. When I took him back to his house, he and Silky played beautifully in the yard for awhile. 

Stefano's a beautiful boy. His expression here could almost be Silky's -- except he's a yellow lab and a boy.

Stefano was a hit at the local quilting guild's workshop. He has the same way of looking directly into your eyes that Silky has but was able to restrain himself from trying to jump up.

When Silky and I were driving home, she became very agitated in the car - highly unusual behavior for her - and I pulled off the road. She tried to relieve several times, each time just squeezing out little drops. On closer inspection, I discovered she had come into season so we drove to the Guide Dogs campus instead of coming home. She'll be there until the first of December.

Silky/Stefano swap

Silky was a bit "reluctant" to have our CFR play and handle her during her evaluation. It made me realize it would be good for Silky to participate in more frequent puppy swaps and puppy sitting adventures. That way, she could become accustomed to being handled by a variety of people and would be less likely to become stressed when our CFR takes her reins in her next eval. . . . or so the theory goes . . .

So I sent an email to Silky's brother's family and asked if they would like to swap puppies for a few days. They said yes, we worked out all the details, and voila! Stefano came to stay.

What a guy! He's Silky's brother. Their litter had 5 yellow labs and 3 black labs. One of their littermates, Spencer, was donated to the Samsung Guide Dog School in Korea. Stefano settled right in and made himself at home on the tie-down next to our kitchen. We went out for a relieve and walk -- he was totally distracted by a small dog (just like Silky would've been) and walked right next to me once we were away from the small dog's influence. Back at home, he crashed.

Stefano is quite a bit larger than Silky is -- he weighs 70+ pounds and she's about 55 these days.The most surprising thing for me was to see they have identical expressions. Silky has a way of looking right into our eyes and Stefano does the same. And his face looks just like Silky's -- only larger and blonde.