Fun Day 2011 (Part 2 - Fun Day!)

Fun Day for us started with getting up early and heading to the Northgate Mall in San Rafael. We took the GDB transport from the mall into the campus. All the pups did great on the transport which is great. They'll be doing lot of transport on busses like that in their futures as Guide Dogs. I love taking my picture with the pups next to the fountain.

(Hilly and me in front of the fountain on the San Rafael campus)

We listened to the opening ceremony which was...well, not my favourite part of the day, but definitely fun to listen to. Then Hilly and I went to the Doggie Massage class. I took this class with Freya, but I thought it would be good to do a refresher course as Hilly is the same high energy puppy that Freya was. I wanted to stick around to see the training department's demo just in case they used Rocco in it, but it was right at the same time as the Massage class. Lucky for me, Rocco wasn't used (I would have died if they used Rocco for the demo and I wasn't there). Hilly loved the class. She fell asleep right away and just let me touch and pet her. This is a big step for her as she wasn't the cuddliest puppy when she came to me, but she's warming up.

(Hilly getting ready for her massage; I did take off the jacket once we were settled)

After our class I booked it out of the kennels so that I wouldn't catch a glimpse of Rocco. Then we walked around the vendor booths. I usually buy a toy or two, but since I knew I wouldn't have Hilly for much longer and still haven't made my final decision on raising in Scotland I decided not to buy anything at the vendor booths (I don't need anymore GDB t-shirts! HAHA!). But we did go to the gift shop to buy a calender for me and a calender for my mom (Remember; Rocco is Mr. May!) and two black lab stuffed puppies in training (I lost the one I bought in honour of Freya at the London Heathrow airport).

Then with nothing to do, we went to our littermate meeting spot. We were the first ones by, but we did get to meet up with Snickers and Tartan.

(Hilly greeting Mr. Snickers)

Then her littermates started showing up. When I went to Fun Day with Freya I met one littermate (Freeway) and with Rocco none of his littermates showed up. All of Hilly's sisters (who were still in the program) showed up. And Hermes was there, but he had just been put into the kennels for his recall before the meeting. That was a bummer, but at least I got to meet her other siblings. The two I didn't get to meet were Hibachi (who was donated) and Havasu (who was CC'd). This was also my calmest littermate meeting.

(Hilly and her sisters sitting around so calmly)

We took some family photos...

From left to right: Halette, Hestia, Hilly, Hanalei, and Hana

This is a closeup of Halette, Hestia, and Hilly. You'll have to excuse my hair, it was a humid morning.

Then I got some close up pictures...

Hestia

Hanalei
Hana

Halette

All these girls were little like Hilly, but Hana was the smallest. I was told she weighed in at 42 lbs! She was small!

After that was lunch which was donated by Panera bread. So, I was a happy girl! I loooovvvveeee Panera! Then we got to watch the training departments demo.

Hilly slept through the whole training demo. And while Rocco wasn't used for the training demo guess who was! Belle puppy EATON was used! It was sooooo cool to see Eaton working up there. The training demo was really cool. Being a part of the training department at Guide Dogs has always been a possible job for me. I mean, I really would love it and every time I see the trainers out there training the dogs in harness I'm reminded about how much I would love to do it. Who knows? I'm still a few years away from graduating form University...

Oh! I also snapped this picture of Hilly's dog mom, "Aqua", from the littermate books.

I also found out that Dylan has been retired from breeding. Yes, I'm sad that I don't get the chance to raise another Dylan pup as the two girls I've had have been wonderful, but he was getting up there in years. If Dylan's puppy raisers are miraculously reading my blog I would just like to say thank you for raising a great daddy. I've thoroughly enjoyed raised his babies.

Tomorrow I shall write about our ferry ride into San Francisco.