Getting SO big and learning SO much!

Its been a busy couple of weeks for Jethro. He's been learning lots of new work and growing like a weed. The heat is driving us all crazy, neither one of us can stand working in this temperature. Record temperatures in Texas has made for a long summer, and it's only July!!

We are introducing some of the new "finds" this week. We worked on finding the "elevator", and the "button". Trying to get a 17 week old puppy to concentrate and find a specific object that he has no idea what you are asking him to do, in a crazy mall full of teenagers and tourists is NOT as fun as it sounds! :o) You might as well as be asking him to find the moon, he understands that about as much as asking him to find the button, thank goodness for repetition and consistency, and good old fashioned treats! In this outing, he ate an ENTIRE bag of treat!

We also did a series of finds associated with the convenience of shopping. We teach them to find the "door", then find the "counter" (which must have a human at it) then in the case of Starbucks, find a "seat", to enjoy your beverage.

We ended the week at the vet where he weighed in a whopping 49 pounds!! He's so big, its hard for people to remember that he's only 18 weeks!!!!

Here's hoping for a cooler week!

A busy couple of weeks!

We've had a busy couple of weeks here in puppy raising land. Jethro had a vet appointment and is now 40 pounds!! Gigantor is getting bigger by the minute. He already had to upgrade to the big boy kennel, because when he sat in the smaller kennel his ears stuck through the top. He LOVED his little kennel, but the boss said he needed a bigger one. So upgrade we did!

Jethro spent a couple of days with a sitter while we took some classes in Dallas. Its always a great training opportunity for puppies to work with sitters, so we love it when they get the chance to send them off to "camp".We spent a great deal of time getting over things that worry him, this week it seemed to be the bubbler across the street.

But it doesn't take much to get over the worry. A few cookies and 100 degree temperatures really helped him appreciate the cool water coming out of the scary water monster. After licking it and sticking his head in the running water we were friends with the bubbler. When its this hot, we do a lot more obedience during the day, and save the walks for cooler times of day, here we are doing the guide dogs version of push-ups. First we do a sit, then a down then and up-sit and we do it all over again, for cookies of course!

Jethro is on a guide dog fundraising credit card! the link is on the right nav bar, sign up today and sport Jethro and raise funds at the same time!