Blade Edge

Today we got a new family member, Nuri, a pure golden retreiver. Apparently the name is Arabic and means ‘typhoon’. Oh boy. Nuri is our 7th CCI puppy, a program whereby people raise puppies bred to become service dogs that are assigned to handicapped people to do things like pick stuff off the floor, open doors, etc. Once the puppy is just over a year old, we give them back to CCI to begin their training which means of course that you have to let them go, but it’s not so bad when you’re able to get a new one! The other puppies we’ve raised are (in order from oldest to newest) Hadlee, Glenda, Tiffany, Arey, Shane and Wilara. Of all of them, Tiffany was the only one to make it all the way through training and be assigned an owner. Hadlee, Arey and Shane live with other families now as regular doggies and Glenda is still living with us. Wilara is just about ready to be turned in, they believe she’ll make a good breeder dog.

I love puppies for two reasons. The first is that they have no idea what anything is and so playing with them is lots of fun, because you can roll stuff around and they’ll chase it with wild abandon. You can also just sit back and be entertained watching them poke their noses all over the place. The second is that they’re just little fuzzballs and they have the puppy run – that clumsy gait that looks like they’re going to trip and fall at any moment.

Nuri seems to be settling in pretty well for her first day. She takes the two steps seperating the kitchen and den with only a seconds hesitation eitehr way, and found herself a bone to gnaw straight away. Jewely and Rachel, our two shelties, and Glenda have of course been a bit nasty to the newcomer because we lavish all sorts of attention on her. So the pup got barked down numerous times when she inadverdently approached too close to any of the other dogs. Jewely hates new puppies completely and they soon learn to steer clear until they grow bigger than her, hahaha. Glenda will soon be wrestling with the puppy after a few days, we just have to watch them because it can get a bit rough sometimes – Tiffany ended up with a broken leg after romping around with Glenda 😛

In other news, I completed transposing all my 2005 entries from the GDNet journal – only three more years to go, hahah.