Anticipation

We've been attending club meetings since September, learning how to care for a guide dog puppy. Next week, Paul and I will meet the "puppy truck" and bring home an 8-week old puppy. Then we'll take care of the wee beastie for about a year. If we do our job well, the wee beastie will grow into a happy, healthy, well-behaved dog and go on to puppy college and eventually become a guide dog for the blind.

What, you ask, is our job? Well, it starts with providing the basics, food, water, and a safe place to live and play. House manners come next, including training the puppy to relieve on command. Then we do some basic training -- sit, stay, come, ... And finally we need to socialize the puppy, which means exposing him or her to lots of different environments, animals, and people.

Him or her? We don't yet know whether our puppy will be male or female, but there are currently more females available than males, so the puppy will probably be a female. As to the breed, it may be a lab/retriever mix or a lab. I hope it is a mix, because they seem to be a little easier to train.

Our puppy? Well, the puppy won't really be "ours." The puppy belongs to "Guide Dogs for the Blind," www.guidedogs.com. We are simply volunteer puppy raisers. Nonetheless, I am a bit concerned about how it will feel to give up the wee beastie when he is ready for format guide dog training.

Here boy ...