What's With All This Training Talk?

I talk a lot about the amount of work these dogs require, and will continue to for the rest of their lives. When I mention to friends that we are going to a training session, or that I take the dogs out and work obedience with them, they often times just assumed that would eventually end. After all, these dogs have been through 1-2 years of training with some of the best trainers around, so what gives?

Raven working with distractions

Boy That's A Lot Of Stuff

We have a 10 year old type 1 diabetic daughter and a 5 year old son. Whenever we go out, even if it's just to the grocery store, we require a lot of stuff.

But for the sake of this post, let's assume we are going out for a whole day. Let's say we will meet some friends for a trip to the Arboretum, and then head off to dinner. How much stuff do we need to take to make sure we can get through the day? Without a trip to an ER?

A Great Weekend

This weekend was a busy one. We celebrated my son's 5th birthday all weekend, and went with a couple of Canine Hope families to the Arboretum.

We started off at the Lazy Dog Cafe for lunch. It is one of our families favorite places to go for lunch, and it has "dog" right in the name, what's not to love? The picture above shows the family waiting for our table. They are in the "missing man" formation, as I should be in the seat on the right :-)

Why a DAD? Part 2 of an ongoing topic

Last week I covered the first reason why we have a DAD, night alerting and back-up plans for zombies. Today, I will cover my second reason, which for the uninitiated sounds crazy, but once you've witnessed it, never ceases to amaze. We call it "remote alerting"

Yesterday here in the U.S. was President's Day, a school holiday for our kids. I didn't have the day off, but my wife has the amazing good fortune to be able to work from home. I came home from work at about 4:15 pm, and both of our kids were playing in the backyard. Running around, riding scooters, getting dirty, burning off energy.  I came in the back door, put my stuff down, and found my wife in the kitchen starting to prep dinner. Major was on a place (a mat where we ask them to "down, stay"), and Raven was tethered to my wife doing some training. We started talking about our day.