Last night Aries, Gus, Marley, Sakari, and Sunny got a little exercise and then started the Canine Good Citizen/Therapy Dog class at Klondike Canine Academy with help from their handlers, Waynetta, Mary, Kitty, Jennifer, and Kyler.

Sakari did a beautiful job for Kyler, largely working off-lead getting a lot of "click-and-treat" for eye contact in sits and downs. Gus was his typical calm and quiet cream puff for Jennifer. The doodles, Marley and Sunny, were excited handfuls for Kitty and Mary. Aries was highly treat motivated but Waynetta succeeded in keeping all of her fingers intact.

We look forward to more training sessions and are interested in working with "guest trainers" who would like to learn along with the dogs.

We invited a couple of Kitty's friends to bring their children to meet the dogs. One family might borrow Bob soon.

It's been awhile since the Norwood family visited us. The boys are growing! They got along beautifully with all the dogs. They especially liked Conner and plan to borrow him next week.

"152 nails to trim.  152 nails.  Grind one down.  Move to the next. 151 nails to trim!"

I've been neglecting nail trimming.  I didn't want to try the new dogs until I felt more comfortable with them and I was really reluctant to handle the crazy-long double rear dewclaws on Harley and Dexter.  And I'm lazy.  But Grazie, Marley and Bob have Pet Partners tests tomorrow so I decided to do them.  Then Kitty helped so I decided to do the rest of the dogs.

O.k., it wasn't quite like that.  I was trimming Bob first.  We were outside and I put some pieces of raw venison medallions on the table.  Bob is so easy that I didn't grab any meat treats for awhile.  Then I heard something and turned to see Harley coming off the empty table.  Grrr...  So I decided to switch to Harley.  He struggled a bit at first but Kitty gave him lots of treats (Ewww!  Meat!) and I sat on him.  It took quite awhile to grind down over half an inch from each of his four rear dewclaws.  By the time I finished he was lying on his side and relaxed.  I was sweating.  I cuddled with him for awhile before switching back to Bob.

Bob makes nail trimming so easy.  It's remarkable how calm he is about it.  Since Grazie is testing tomorrow I did her next.  She was happy to get treats during the trim.  Marley tests tomorrow too so I did him next.  That was a breeze, especially with his recent haircut.  He's such a sweetie.  (He's lying on my leg as I type this.)

I was feeling refreshed after Marley so I decided to try Dobky.  He tends to "freeze" whenever he's stressed so I was hoping he'd just hunker down and let me trim.  He was a bit more active than that but he did well, especially for his first time.  He got a lot of meat.

Another set of long dewclaws remained.  I've been wincing whenever I see Dexter's rear dewclaws and it was time to tackle them.  I was expecting it to be quite a chore but Dexter was a doll!  He was so good about letting me grind and grind on him.  He even remained standing the whole time.  I was impressed.  Dexter was the big surprise of the evening.

Jarreau...oh, Jarreau.  He's a handful.  Nothing new.  I finished on Morgan because I can always count on him to be solid.  I'd say that he's stoic about nail trimming but I'm not sure it even bothers him.  He's so confident and trusting.  It's a joy to work with him.  And that's it!  No more nails to trim...except my own.  I really gouged a couple with the grinder.

We've had two dogs, Maddie and Marley, pass their Delta Society Pet Partners evaluations after being adopted.  Today one of our adoptable dogs, Bob, passed his DSPP evaluation!  Kitty tested with Marley, Kyler tested with Grazie (for renewal) and then Kyler tested with Bob.  All of the teams passed!  Grazie did a great job but the boys barely made it.  Bob was quite social and had no problems with people but was doing too well at being a Husky (tight leash) and showed much more interest in the neutral dog (a Corgi mix) than he should.