Sarah and Josette are stars!

Check out the story about Guiding Eyes' new program. Way to go, Sarah and Josette! But what, no picture?

http://www.recordonline.com:80/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070918/NEWS/70918026

Has it really been 2 years?

Murphy is 2 today, so one more look at my all-time favorite puppy picture of him.

I'm sure that he is going to have a wonderful day with Lance, and that warms my heart.

Eek!

Now we're hearing Nettie might not go IFT until April or May!

Two cool things to report...

At puppy class on Saturday, I met some new raisers who will be getting their puppy next month. Later at the end of class, I mentioned for those who hadn't heard that I had gotten one letter from Lance and that Murphy was doing great. (We didn't have an August class, so a lot of folks didn't know yet I'd heard from him.)

Anyway, the woman then came up to me after class and said they'd decided to raise after reading the articles I wrote about raising Murphy! When I wrote the first one in December, their Lab was in poor health and she said she thought she'd like to do that after he died. The second article in July came out right after she had died and she remembered it when she saw it. So I was very happy! I had been kind of bummed, because I had hoped writing them might be a recruitment thing, and didn't think it had happened. They seem really nice and enthusiastic.

The other cool thing: I hate to even type this for jinxing my self, but Nettie has been quiet for two mornings in a row. I'm asking for trouble by even mentioning it, I know.

One other piece of news/adjustment: Apparently GEB is now keeping the pups out much later, and Nettie wouldn't go IFT before March at the earliest. We're kind of stunned because we were figuring she'd go in Nov/Dec, when she'd be 15-16 months old. For reasons I can't get into at the moment, this throws a big curveball our way, and we're going to have to figure out how to handle it. Stay tuned ...

Final tally for Wella/Farrell

I just saw on the GEB web site that Meg, Murphy's last sibling in training, graduated and is now a guide. So it worked out that 4 of the 8 from the litter are guides. One was released as a puppy, one was released at IFT, and then Maddox and Morley got released from training.

Maddox's release was a little anticlimactic. He had been placed in the July class after not matching in June, and then pulled from it, too. At that point it was decided he didn't want to be a guide, so he was adopted out and is now a pet in NY. I know his raiser was very disappointed, after having had two months of buildup, of him being in class twice and then getting yanked. Oh well!

This was, I believe, Farrell's last litter, so yay for Farrell!