Happy Valentine's Day (by: Carlo)

Even though we now have baby boy, which keeps my pal and me SUPER busy, my pal still always seems to find the time to incorporate me into her photo shoots. Take yesterday, for example...

Baby boy was asleep in his crib. I was sound asleep on my doggie bed. When, all of a sudden I hear, "Hey, Carlo, come here for a minute!" Groggily, I stood up, did a big stretch and shake, and trotted into the other room to see what was up.

I found my pal with camera in hand hovering over the floor. "Uh oh", I thought as I slowed my pace down. But, then in my pal's other hand I saw a bag of dog treats! Sweet! And, I happily picked up my pace until I was sitting right next to my pal, nose and mouth strategically placed right next to the bag of treats.

However, I was not expecting what came next! My pal had me lay down on the floor and she began laying treats down all around my paws in the outline of a heart! Now if you recall, CCI pups are taught not to eat food off the ground. While I am no longer a CCI pup in training, I'm still not supposed to eat food off the ground... at least not when my pal is looking... ;-) So, there I lay as my pal slowly put each treat down, one by one.

It was torture, I tell you! Well, it was torture between the moments when my pal would look up from her handy work and exclaim, "Good boy Carlo!" as she handed me a treat. But those delicious moments were few and far between... since for some reason my pal thinks I've become a little chunky lately and need to be on a diet. Sigh...

Finally the grueling photo session was over and the photo above is one of the end results. Hope you all had a happy Valentine's Day! Can I go back to sleep now?

Gerrit Made It!... Almost (by: Carlo)

A couple of weeks ago, my pal received an email from CCI that Gerrit... as in little clown boy Gerrit... was rotating through to Team Training! He did it! He made it through 6 months of Advanced Training and actually made it to Team Training!

For those of you who may not know, Team Training is a two week period in which people with disabilities, who have applied for an assistance dog, come and stay at the CCI campus. During this time, the people are carefully matched with a dog. CCI does a really good job of making the perfect match... they want to make sure that a person and dog are just right for each other and are true soul mates!

After getting the good news email, we had to wait until midway through the first week of Team Training to find out whether Gerrit had matched. There are always more dogs than people in Team Training, so there are always some dogs that don't make a match. Waiting to find out what the news was on Gerrit was like waiting for a bowl of food... excruciating!

Well, we finally got the news... and Gerrit did not match. But, that's not really bad news. It just means that he didn't find his soul mate this time. He's going to continue his training at CCI and hopefully he'll make a match at the next Team Training in May. If you ask me, I think Gerrit just wanted to stay in college a little longer and have fun. The party boy probably wasn't ready to get a real job yet!

The super cool thing is that Gerrit's work buddies, Dupre and Enso, did make a match! They will be graduating TOMORROW!!! My pal and I are so excited for them and their puppy raisers and wish them all the very very best!

In anticipation of Gerrit graduating, my pal made a Gerrit photo book to give to his future person. That's a picture of it at the top of this blog. It took her awhile to make it cause she had to sort through tons of photos of clown boy. We're going to keep the book in a special place so that it's ready for the day that Gerrit finds his soul mate!