Great Explorations March 10

For our Saturday meeting in March, we headed over to Great Explorations Children's Museum. Once again, we split into two groups of older puppies (with Marcy) and younger puppies (with me). We had a new pup in our group, Theo, being raised by Southeastern employee Katie with Brandon, and we had past raisers Linda and Kerry join us as they start to finish Bobby.

My group of younger pups started with some outside obedience in the parking lot, practing forward, right about, changing our walking pace (slowing down and speeding up without using a command), and stopping. Tip: To get your pup moving with you, avoid using "come on" (since "come" is a separate command) and use something like "let's go." Speaking of "come," we practiced our come command on a long line, with everyone being gratified to learn that yes, your puppy will come to you!

We then moved to the sidewalk by a busy 4th Street to practice sits while the traffic passed and then walks, including walking by the other dogs.

Then it was time to head inside to let the kids visiting Great Explorations interact with our pups. Here is Popi calmly enjoying the attention (with Ric on the other end of the leash).

His brother Mars, being handled by Carol, likes it, too.

After our time with the kids, we walked the pups around the various museum exhibits, where they had a chance to experience all sorts of sights and sounds you don't come across every day.

We ended the meeting with some announcements. Then some of us headed across the street to have lunch with puppy raising friends past and present.