happy Birthday, Dave..

If you have read the blog from Sunday... you know that we (the Maine puppy raisers) had a "birthday party for Dave"... that Dave wasn't invited to. Actually, what it was all about was, we wanted to get Dave a few lobsters as a birthday gift, but not getting to NEADS for our check in until late in the week, meant the lobsters would have be cooked and then kept. Keeping lobster meat isn't a good idea (unless you freeze it) and we wanted to have it as fresh as we could. So... the lobster bake on Sunday, picking our some lobsters for Dave, and (sadly) freezing the meat until today, when we could bring it to him. So, we arrived at NEADS, and you just know that we had to dress for the occasion. The gals from New York were there as well (hi Lee!!!) and they brought a cake....










And what Dave thought would be just a plain old "training check in day" turned out to be quite the party. We totally surprised him, which was our goal.....


















Here's the cake that Lee brought......























Now, we didn't want Dave to miss his party from Sunday, so we took lots of pictures and put them in a small album so he could see what his party was like. I don't think he knows quite what to do with this group of ours!!!!! We're always surprising him.....
















Nice new coffee cup... a trainer always needs coffee on hand.....
























Kelli took the day off from work, and Ed joined us as well.....Sadly, Bernice, Linda and Randi couldn't make this trip with us.....
















And because of "turn in" Maine is down to just two puppies - Otis and Stoney. Stoney had to see the vet for his "operation"... so brother Edgar joined the group today... they don't seem as excited about the birthday party as the humans do....

















Now, I don't want you to think that we played all day.... we went over to the big hospital and to the train station... (that's me.. but that's also another story).....

















And this is Vicki... she is with a nice lady who is puppy raising in Mass (but I forgot her name)... anywho, Vicki and her raiser will probably be joining us in the months ahead....















At the train station today, we "caught" a train just coming in... the really cool part was it was on a slight lay over and the conductor told us we could bring the puppies on board. That was a good training session, because the train continued to "run" while we walked up and down the isles, sat in the seats, etc.... Dave was pleased to have such a good experience.




The only other "better" thing, which I wished I had gotten a picture of... was us heading for home. Because there were "only" five of us going down this month, we all figured we could squeeze into one car. The trip down was actually a lot of fun.... it's nice to talk and laugh together... and the three dogs - Otis, Stoney and Edgar - all rode in the back. Coming home however, our dog count went from three to four!!! (next blog).... and we had 100 lbs of dog food to bring back... and it was snowing..... quite the trip to say the least, and probably looked like the circus coming to town. But, such a fun, fun day.... and Dave said it really made his birthday....

This is Lorna... and Norton...

it's also my next blog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!