She learned back!

Finally! We have been working on this command for a good month now, and she was having quite a bit of trouble with it. From my understanding, "backing up" is not a normal canine behavior, so many dogs have problems with it because it does not fee comfortable to them. Needless to say, Tyanna was having this problem, but in the past few days she has been showing quite improvement!! Here's a video of her practicing her "backs". They still need a little cleaning up. And oh, please excuse my messy messy room!

Picture Post

Here are some pictures from tonight...



Ignoring food on the floor (that I of course accidentally dropped...)

Exciting things on the horizon...

Good news first: I am going to be a "featured alumna" at my grade school next week for my work with CCI.
Bad news: This involves a presentation about CCI and puppy raising, which also involves public speaking....

Luckily, with the help of the CCI Chicago Satellite Office, the director was able to get two grads to come help me out with a demonstration and talking to the kids about assistance and how they enhance the lives of the people they work with. I'm very excited to see the demo, and get the kids excited about CCI (which may lead to a school-wide fundraiser...), but I HATE public speaking!!! But, it's all worth it!! I'm pretty excited to go back and show what I've been up to and stuff. I'll post pictures :). That happens on the 30th (next Wed. I believe).

I have also made a resolution to start taking more pictures of Ty. I have barely any of her out and about in public, and it's starting to make me sad! I also have like 10 pictures total of me and her actually together...so gotta get more of those!!

Hopefully I'll be able to put up some pictures later tonight!!

Old Pictures

Here are some old pictures from the summer that I found lurking in my hard drive.



You can see her tattoo in this picture.



Practicing her down-stay in PetsMart.

Weekend Update

Alright guys, so I accidentally cleared my memory card after visiting the regional center...so no pictures of the center!! Trust me, I'm pretty upset! It was really fun, I got to meet with my PPM and see the training room where they have a house set up to practice commands. I also got to see the kennels, and some brand new puppies that had just arrived and are waiting to go out to their PRs!! They were absolutely ADORABLE.

My grandpa lives about an hour and a half from the regional center, so we spent Saturday there. Tyanna was excellent in the hotel room, and did a great job in the car. She came with us to a few restaurants, as well as Wal-Mart. She also had her first encounter with cats at my grandpa's house. She did excellent, didn't even lunge! She didn't know what to make of them at first, and would lie down and try to inch her way over to see what they were. She then figured out they were boring and took a nap :).



The following pictures are from the hotel room. She loved lying on the cool bathroom tile floor...even though it was 20 degrees outside!

The Chunkster

After our visit to the vet today, my suspicions of Tyanna's weight have been confirmed....she's starting to get a little chunky. The doc assured us that this was nothing more than the normal "winter weight gain", but would still like me to try to get her to trim down a bit because she is still growing. Nothing drastic, just a little less food at each meal. He said it should come off with no problem!

Please ignore my face in the above picture....its one of the only recent ones I have uploaded onto my computer!!

Exciting News!

Today was the last day of finals, so I'm in a pretty darn good mood, but I'm now in an even BETTER mood because my mom gave me a little news today... :)

Well, I have a 5 day weekend this week, so my parents planned a trip to CCI for me! Unlike many of you other raisers out there (the lucky ones), I don't get to go to the center that much because it is so far away. So, early this Friday morning I will be on my way to the North Central Regional Center (and visiting my Grandpa)!!! I'm SO excited!!!!