Thursday, October 1, 2009

First Day on the Job

A littl while back I made mention of some changes coming to Wilderwood....as of today ...Change Has Come! There are many different reason why we are changing things up, I think its for the good.

BUT FIRST.....Ira has some pics to share...did I mention a short Attention span?? I Ask for a "Sit"



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Which Becomes.....????


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And Now for the rest of our story.

The way we were:
Wilderwood has done things a little different than other schools. Most of our pups come from breeders or shelters; around the typical 5-8weeks old time period, sometimes a little older.Their first stop would be the kennels, where our puppy trainers would work with them for 6 months, training about 30 commands. Once they had those nailed down, they would proceed to foster homes, who would keep and socialize the pups for about 4-6 months. Around 9 months old, the pups would come in to us trainers for advanced training where they would stay for about 3 months, moving once a month to a different trainer. Than came Graduation where the families came for 8 days and trained with their new dog. The End.

The way it will be: (come Oct.1)
We are taking out the major part of the foster program, and mainly going to work with older rescue pups around 6 months and a above. We will still use some puppies from breeders our President likes...such as Bouviers pups and Golden-doodles; they will go immediately to foster homes (yay) and stay there for about six months, than move out to the kennels, where we will train with them for 20 weeks.We will have volunteers who will come and take the dogs for specific outings during the week, while they are in the kennels. Once hit week 20, we Trainers start looking for foster homes for the dogs to go to for about 4 weeks until its time for them to graduate.


October 1st Arrives

Since everyone is out of town (except me), our actual orientation isn't until next Tuesday; butI went to the kennels, played with the pups.....ok more like let them play with each other......They had fun getting me all muddy regardless...(hence why me and my expensive camera are on this side of the fence) Don't even try to ask me whose who, cause ...they all look the same! :))

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I took Miss Abby on an Outing. Abby is a 9+ month Labradoor Poodle mix with a bad hair cut.....she was extremely matted when we got her and....lets just say a pair of neat grooming shears weren't handy......It'll grow. She has a.. 'slight' dislike of cars so we worked through that for about an hour, but once we got in the car out of the driveway and onto the straight away, she decided she liked the feel of the breeze in her hair. And stood looking at everything out the window,

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(One day I'll be cute!)

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We road around and than since she was doing so well, we decided to go into Hobby Lobby; she did great walking calmly by my side! We even met another service dog...a Guide Dog, and she stood quietly with me while I chatted with the handler and her friend.
After our success there we went to Tractor Supply (Hi Sarah) and picked up some more KONGS (I'm up to 8 now) and met some nice people there.I was riding high on the way home, when I heard a slight-not-so-not-noise.....whether she'd thrown up or had an accident I could not see, until I'd arrived back at the kennels. Basically every treat I'd given her came back up. Oh well. I'm sure she felt better after that. I visited with the pups for a little bit, made sure they had water and headed home.


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Yoda -German Shepherd/Rottie Pup

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samuel -Golden Retriever (I think that's sam...its so hard to tell which is which)

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Cutie Patootie.

2 comments:

The 'splorin' Wolfies said...

do you like the changes? i love the pictures!

Erin said...

Thanks! I am reserving judgment until we've been in this a little while! I know its going to be rocky...at first so ask me about 3 months ok? :))