We got pictures from both Banta and Zodiac this week. I love getting emails from our pups and photos make it even more exciting.
Banta and Mark
Banta was recently at a family wedding and she got a special outfit for the event. Not sure why a tie, but she looks cute in it all the same.
David and Zodiac
Zodiac is earning a little bit a freedom around the house and mostly using it wisely. He is still young and sure to test the boundaries a bit. But he is learning.
Snoopy and his doghouse
Here is a photo of the window as it looked late last week. Bill helped me get the support structure for the tree finished. Yeah! This week, I got some work done on the red star and I got the lights put on the tree. The tree still needs to be painted green. Today I picked up 7 cases of candy from World Foods. I should have most of the candy I need for the window now except the sky which I’ll be order in the next week or so.
I haven’t gotten as much done this week as I’d hope. I’ve been fighting a cold and I finally feel like I’m winning the battle after a week. Hopefully Saturday will be a good day to get lots of candy attached.
Emma eating her lunch
Emma is 12 weeks old today and she got the next round of vaccinations today too. She weighted 22.8 lbs. That is almost 3 lbs. heavier than Dune was at that age. It isn’t our imagination that Emma weights more than our other girls. She is a cute little chunk of puppy. It is funny because her front paws are much larger than her back paws. She slept through the night after just three nights and most nights she puts herself into her kennel to sleep.
Emma is the easiest puppy we have raised so far. She has an interesting mix if energy, calmness, independence, and malleability. Emma is a super slow eater. I’ve started putting her food down first and then taking Dune out to relieve after she finishes eating. I’m usually back in time hear Emma finishing up her dinner. She still keeps me on my toes and Dune is being a wonderful big sister. Dune still has two more weeks of “house arrest” because she is in season. These two girls add lots of joy and fun to our lives.
I’m almost ready to start gluing on the candy. All the structure is shaped and most of it is painted. I still need to paint the inside of the doghouse black. The biggest thing I have left to do on this stage is the tree. While I have the tree shaped, I still need to build the support structure that will go through the roof of the doghouse to the ground. Then I need to put the lights on the tree and finally paint it. The only other pre-candy prep I need to do is to attach the string of big lights the will drape across the roof of the doghouse to some stiff wire so that it will look the way I want it to. I think I’ll use duct tape.
I’ve got the candy pretty much planned out but I’ll go over that in another post. (I’ll put up pictures as soon as I get some more taken.)
Yakira – photo by Lisa Thompson
We got some not so good news on Yakira recently. Her handler has decided to return Yakira to Guide Dogs for the Blind. They ended up not being a very good match. Diane loves to talk long walks and hike in the mountains and along the beach. While Yakira did great guiding in stores and malls and her house behaviors were great, she just didn’t do well with the long walks on the bike trail. Plus she didn’t deal well with puddles and mud and ddebris from trees so she never dared take her on trails for to the beach.
We have been concerned for their partnership for several months but hoped that we were just not reading between the lines correctly. We are very grateful that Diane made this decision soon enough that there is a chance that Yakira might be reissued to another handler. She will be evaluated when she gets back to campus and they will decided if she will be career changed or partnered with a new blind person.
Yakira gets on a puppy truck headed to San Rafael tomorrow. When she gets there, someone from their Oregon campus will meet her and take her back to where she was originally trained. While we hope and pray that Yakira still wants to be a guide dog, we realize that may not be the case. Whatever her future brings, I’m sure that she will do something wonderful with it. If not as a guide dog than maybe as another kind of service dog. We hope to have an update on Yakira in a couple of weeks.
Clifford – photo by Karen Fuller
This morning a beloved dog named Clifford passed away. He was raised in hopes that he would grow up to be a guide dog but when he went back to Guide Dogs for the Blind for training they discovered he had cataracts. Though a miraculous series of events Clifford was adopted by my sister’s family. From the first day Clifford brought so much happiness and peace to their household. He instinctively knew just what to do. Clifford had the right mix of fun-loving and being laid back.
Shortly after his fourth birthday Clifford developed an autoimmune disorder that attached first his joints and then his blood and other organs. Despite treatment, his platelets were so low that his body just gave out. Though Clifford’s time was short his impact was huge. He will be sorely missed by not only his family but the many others he crossed paths with along the way.
Bill getting Emma off the puppy truck
We picked up our eighth puppy this afternoon from the Guide Dogs for the Blind puppy truck and her name is Emma. Such a great name! There is always this little bit of worry that your pups name will be something awful, but Emma is wonderful. She is super cute, super tired, and super sweet. She just had her first meal at our house, peed outside (yeah) and then fell asleep in the x-pen. I’m looking forward to getting to know her. So far she has been wonderfully easy but I think when she gets rested and adjusted we will get to know her real personality.
I’ll post pictures as soon as I can.
I’ve been putting a lot of time into my candy window the last week or so, trying to reach my goal of getting the structure done before Pup “E” gets here tomorrow. I’ve made good progress too! We just finished up Snoopy (minus his ears). The doghouse is finished. The tree is shaped. It still needs the trunk and support structure put together but we have all the supplies. The snow and on the top of the doghouse is shaped but it needs some more work. I also made the large star for the top of the doghouse and a dog bowl.
I need to get some of the super thick pellon for Snoopy’s ears, his hat, the ribbon etc. I still need to build the whirligig. Once I have the actual box that the window will go in I’ll need to build the base snow and the background snow structure. But I’m really pleased with the progress this week. Hopefully Pup “E” settles in quickly and I’ll be able to get a few things done next week.
Back in May of 2012 I wrote a post about a cool time-lapse project. It inspired me to try my own time-lapse project with Zodiac. I did pretty good at getting a video clip of Zodiac most weeks while he was growing up. I didn’t get a chance to work on it before he left and it was on the back burner all summer until we got the news he was doing in-home training. That pushed it to the urgent category on my to do list.
click on photo to link to video
I’ve never done any video editing so I had lots to learn. I first tried to use the slide show software that I have but that couldn’t handle the project at all. I have a very old version of Adobe Premiere Pro so I installed that I started reading the manual. Premiere Pro was surprisingly intuitive and most of the basics was pretty easy to figure out. I didn’t try to get fancy with anything but it came out pretty good considering my lack of experience, the quality of the video (just shot with my basic digital camera) and the not so good lighting or set up I had.
I didn’t try to do this for Dune (which I’m kind of sad about) but I want to do something for Pup “E” coming next Friday. I’m just not sure how I want to do it. I don’t want to do it the same way. While I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, it isn’t really what I was hoping for. I want a way to capture how the puppies grow and change over the year that we have them. I’ve got seven days to come up with a plan. Anybody have any suggestions?
partly constructed doghouse
I started on Step Four: build following the DOABLE approach to story projects. We picked up a 4×8 sheet of 1/2″ thick Styrofoam insulation to build the doghouse. Bill asked me if I didn’t need two sheets. I replied that the doghouse wasn’t that big so one should be enough. I was wrong. I was missing one side and half the roof. I patched two pieces together to make the side but there isn’t nearly enough to make the other roof panel. That’s what happens when you don’t plan very well. Now it will take another trip to the store. I guess I was being lazy.
I’ve glued together the four sides of the doghouse so they will be set when I get the rest of the roof cut. I also made a little wreath to hang above the door on the end. One item is ready to go. I even have candy that will work for the wreath. It is exciting to be starting on the actual building part of my window! My first big goal is to get the structure done (hopefully before our new puppy comes next Friday).
telling family tales 