Carillon Park October 15th

For our Saturday meeting in October, we met at the Hilton parking lot located in the Carillon office park on a beautiful fall morning. We began with some sit-stays and down-stays as I weaved (wove?) through the pups, testing their ability to maintain their position with a new person passing nearby. I then did it again, this time lightly stepping on the pups' paws and tails. No, I do not enjoy tormenting puppies, but the reality is that they will get stepped up (lightly and not), so it is good to help prepare them for that. It wasn't always easy for the pups to stay, but they did pretty well.

Next, we practiced two people greeting each other with their pups calm at their sides. We divided into pairs standing facing each other with our pups sitting at our sides, maybe 10 feet apart. Then one person-dog team moved in one step, and the pup sat again. As long as the pups behaved, we got closer and closer, until finally the two people could shake hands and chat, with nicely sitting pups at their sides. Everyone did great!

Then I talked a bit about the proper way to busy your pup. Since there's a lot to say about this (really!), I will follow up with a separate post on the subject.

After our obedience session, we headed over to the sculpture garden in front of the Raymond James building. The sculpture garden is full of all kinds of statues of people and animals in various poses. These familiar but unmoving forms can be unnerving to dogs. Below you can see Julianne and Georgie checking out a sitting cowboy.

Like the other dogs at our meeting, Georgie didn't really have a problem with it. I complained that our group was kind of boring – everybody does everything so well! Really, great job, guys, for raising these confident puppies that can handle just about anything!

After our uneventful visit to the sculpture garden, we headed back to the Hilton for a walk around the entrance fountain. Here Heather is helping raiser applicant Räandi handle JR, who, of course, is happily unconcerned about the splashing water. Good work for such a little guy!

It was time to head over to the boardwalk that goes around Lake Carillon. Betty Jo and Dawson, along with several other raisers and pups, stopped to watch several turtles swimming next to the boardwalk.

We also crossed the bridge across the lake, with its noisy metal ramps at each end that we made sure to stomp on to see if we could get a rise out of the pups. No such luck. Here JR is leading Heather, no doubt eager to get to the next metal ramp. "Can we do it again?"

On the other side of the lake is a small park around the carillon tower that gives the area its name – a carillon which never seems to make a sound, alas. Pups Georgie (with Lincoln, Julianne, and Jennie) and Tammy (with sitter Lauren) are walking nicely and not lunging for a green, leafy snack – though Georgie does look tempted!

We finally ended up back in a shady spot of the Hilton parking lot, where the pups enjoyed a drink of water while I made some announcements, which I'll detail in a followup entry.