a teary day......

Today we attend another wonderful, amazing NEADS graduation.... as I thought, it was a great emotional day... and I will never get threw a graduation without crying my eyes out!!! I still say, when I am asked "how do you give up your puppies after a year of work.."  this is "how"!!!!

Right away, Deb seemed to sense the importance of this day.. she was as good as gold, but spent much of the ceremony sitting like this, with her eye glued to me. She seems quite concerned that I was "upset" though I told her a million times, everything was just fine. Even though this is the fall graduation and Rylie was matched a month ago, her graduation will be next spring.. so I could "enjoy" this one without any personal attachments (ha, ha!!!)

There were 26 teams today... with dogs from each group.. though this time, the dogs for children seem to out weigh the number of dogs in the other groups. The testimonies of the parents of these children is so great and so hard to listen too... and some of the children even had the courage to stand up and talk about their dogs...

Story upon story about how the children had improved since getting dogs.. everything from behavior to school work.. to making friends.. and how families can now do "normal" things... like one family who said they now can go out for dinner... because with their child's dog resting quietly under the table... their child felt secure and wanted to "act as nicely as the dog".... it just goes on and on as what these dogs do for these very special children....

Here are a few of the service dogs... but one in particular is the dog on the right. This team is from Maine!!! and not only that.. but the dog, Radar... is the dog that was sponsored by the gold star Mother that we met last December in Arlington National Cemetery... AND Radar was trained in prison, but his weekend puppy raiser is the same gal that had Rylie on the weekends while she was doing her prison training... the longer I am with NEADS, the smaller the program gets!!!!

Deb finally decided that I was really OK, and got comfortable and spent the second half of graduation like this!!!!

and here's a dog that you all "know"... this is Hope!! and if you don't remember, she came and lived here at the farm for a month when she and Rylie traded spots. Hope and Rylie are sisters, and Hope isn't far from having a match...Here she demos some of the tasks that she can do... like turning on the lights...

And opening the frig!!! There was also one other litter mate to Rylie and Hope.. that was Norton. I got to see him as well, and turns out, he's being trained as a hearing dog and didn't have much more to go before his match would be coming up. So that was a big success for NEADS.. Rylie as a social dog, Hope as a service dog and Norton a hearing dog!!! all off into the world to work their magic...

There was a good crowd of folks that came to the graduation. I knew many of them, and they were excited to meet Debbie and hear all about "where she is with her training".. Actually, it's hard to think that we have just passed the half way mark... time goes quickly.....









And as I have told all my puppies... "it's all about the RED vest"!!!! and next graduation will be all about Rylie!!!!