PetSmart & Pinellas Trail Overpass July 9th

Our Saturday meeting in July was a twofer, with the PetSmart on Tyrone Boulevard sitting right next to a part of the Pinellas Trail where a bridge crosses a busy intersection.

As the puppies arrived, they were met by one of SEGD's life-size plastic yellow donation dogs, to see how they would react. None of the pups were particularly fazed by the immobile canine. They were more interested in the animated canines around them. We did a forward circle around the plastic pup and added a couple of live ones in the middle, then did a weave through them all. Everyone did very well.

Next, we got out some towels to wipe down the puppies' paws, just to make sure they were OK with having their paws deep-cleaned. Again, all did well, as Heather and Mitch demonstrate.

Now for the fun part! We split into two groups, with Marcy taking half the group to the Pinellas Trail overpass in the hot sun, and me taking the other half into the air-conditioned pet store. (There are perks to being AC.) As we did at Michaels, the PetSmart group went into PetSmart first out of coat, in case any pups hadn't yet experienced all the interesting things therein. Here is Hunter reflecting on the significance of his name as he encounters the guinea pigs. They don't seem to notice, but fortunately his raiser Eileen does.

Next, we put the coats on and went into working mode. Tammy makes it clear that she doesn't much care for fish, making puppy sitter Stephanie's handling job easier.

Georgie calmly thinks to himself, "Here kitty kitty kitty" as Jennie and family look on.

And Bob takes it all in with David, the only raiser lucky enough not to have his head chopped off by the photographer (that would be me).

Alas, I could not be in two places at one time, so I have no pictures from the Pinellas Trail, but I know our pups got to experience passing bicycles, walking along a bridge with an open view over the roar of traffic, and practicing on concrete stairs, while the raisers were reminded to walk at right angles as a visually impaired person would do rather than take shortcuts through open areas. Marcy also talked about the importance of having a first-aid kit for our pups and what should be in it.

Oh, and there was the experience of sun and rain! As the last puppy raisers were leaving PetSmart, there was a downpour, and I couldn't see Marcy's group anywhere in our covered meeting spot. I'm thinking, "Marcy's going to kill me." Luckily, they were just around the corner and had escaped the worst of the weather. We'll see if Marcy shows up at any more meetings...

With everyone back together again, all that remained was for me to make some announcements, which I'll detail in a followup post.