Last week, Missouri prison inmates graduated the 3,000th dog from a training program in which the prisoners at 19 Missouri institutions provide 8-weeks of training for the shelter dogs to prepare them for adoption. The program is called Puppies for Parole. http://goo.gl/0JEr3J
Here is a video that provides the details of a similar program in Colorado. http://goo.gl/mStNik
There is just something about those puppy dog eyes — Now a study from Japan says there really is inside our brains, and it turns out inside the puppies’ brains, too.
Eye contact with your dog can have beneficial impacts for both you and your dog, according to an experiment reported last week in the journal Science. Here is a link to the article in technical language: http://goo.gl/NxoQDl
Here are links to two journalistic report on the study in less scientific jargon: http://goo.gl/tVNlKT and http://goo.gl/x3lcoJ
These North Carolina empty-nesters fill some of their time the children used to occupy with elaborate dog pictures. Here is a display of some of the pictures. The couple tries to take the photos each Wednesday. http://goo.gl/h26icS
If you’d like an example of a dog’s confident smile, check this one of Maddie taken Saturday, March 28. Maddie is a 10-month-old Lab puppy. She had been working and playing with her new family, Josh and Kim, for a couple of hours when she posed with them for pictures. [Photo by Mary K. Romesburg]
Three key words to guide training. This professional trainer suggests — consistency, patience and fun — as keys to successful training. Those do match nicely the main concept of our training. Read the details in this short blog post at the American Kennel Club site. http://goo.gl/mPLB0R
Training a service dog. Here is a thoughtful account of spending the first year of a dog’s life in preliminary training as a potential seeing-eye dog and then returning the dog for formal evaluation and training.
What’s it like to give up the dog at about 14 months of age? The seeing eye selection and training process is rigorous. Not all the dogs make it through the program to become service dogs. It is a reminder to the rest of us who may have a single dog we want to help become a service dog or therapy dog that it takes lots of training and practice. One needs to stay with the process when we don’t have the selection process as part of the routine. http://goo.gl/3cPDvo
See this brief video of Moss, the father of our Border Collies, at his farm near Dalguise, Scotland. Moss rounded up the sheep and brought them from a distant corner of the pasture to a gate where we were standing to watch.
Our drill team has accepted an invitation for a performance June 28 at the AKC Dog Museum in St. Louis county.
The American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog, located at 1721 S. Mason Rd., in Queeny Park, West St. Louis County.
Join us there if you can. It is one of several road shows
Photo by Mary Romesburg from performance in Marshall. Mo. in May 2014
we do during the year.
The photo here was taken by Mary Romesburg at after a exhibition at the Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia last September. You can be more than a spectator at our shows. Join the group. Here is a link to give you information about that possibility.
The snow brings lots to admire even while coping with travel difficulties and other winter issues. Here are some of the things we saw.
In our beginning classes (Puppy Kindergarten and Level 1) this week (Feb 23-28), we will introduce the dogs to agility exercises — the A-frame, tunnels, the dog-walk, etc. The agility exercises are great confidence boosters for the dog. It also teaches them to work at a distance from you.