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Hello ya'll...

This will be real quick. I just have to ask you a favor, and I promise it is very easy and simple!
It has come to my attention that a fellow CCI puppy raiser and blogger (which essentially makes us family, right?) has the unique opportunity to see her puppy in training Helaine featured in a commercial! If you are interested in specifics, please head on over to her blog and read her post Dear America which you can do simply by clicking on those gray words that turn blue when you mouse over them. Basically, what she needs is lots of views on her picture of Helaine, which you can help out with simply by clicking here. That's it. Just one simple click. Believe me, you won't be sorry you did because the picture is adorable. What's not to love about a CCI puppy??

C'mon people let's make this puppy FAMOUS!

Concerning what happened on the 16th of August

Remember this picture? It was the first thing I posted to this little blog of ours. What ever happened to that little guy anyway? Well, as anyone knows who has been following this blog for any amount of time, he kinda grew up. He grew into a happy, handsome, confident, hardworking young dog who fills me with pride. He has intertwined his way deeply into my heart and found things hidden there that I didn't even know I had. 

Puppy Raising is not a field of flowers, but it's not all that bad either. After all, we are given an adorable puppy and get to take it almost everywhere with us for a year and a half. Yes there are puppy accidents in the house. And countless seeming impossible training challenges. And the teenage months. And the Vet bills. And the helpless people you have to educate. And the regresses and set-backs where it seems that pup has forgotten everything we ever taught it. But all things considered, I'm convinced that puppy raising is one of, if not the most wonderful and rewarding volunteer opportunity in existence. Until finally comes the dreaded day: Turn-in. The day when puppy raisers across the country collectively perform a single, seemingly simple action.

Outwardly, it encompasses only the momentary passing of a cheap nylon strap from one hand to another. Inwardly, it involves something like a heart surgery performed on one's self. We must find a way to disentangle this gem, to separate this jewel from our hearts in order to place it on its own that it might shine more brilliantly. And we must do this without severing it completely, for that would not only be fatal, it would be impossible.

It is a delicate and painful surgery. 

On the 16th of August, I performed this surgery.

Just after 4 on that beautiful Friday afternoon, I handed Novel's leash to a trainer and watched him trot out the door and into his exciting new life without me. I would be lying if I told you there were no tears, but I don't think I would really want to tell you that anyway. They weren't bad tears. They weren't the scalding tears of abandonment, regret, or loneliness. They were comforting tears. They were honorable tears. They came from a heart swollen to the bursting point with hope and pride. 

I am so proud of Novel. I am so proud of where he has come from and I am proud of where he is headed. I am proud of the lives he has touched, and the ones he has yet to touch. I am proud of what he has taught me. I am proud of who he is. 

Not the greatest picture, but it was the only remotely usable one of Novel and I crossing the stage...

Directly after the ceremony...

Such a silly boy :) ...And now you know why he was sitting so straight
and looking so intently at something in all these pictures ;)

Last minute pics with Dante before turn in

Waiting in the turn-in line

A final farewell...

...and out the door he goes!

10,000 words...but a whole lot less.

I'm sure that some of you remember me complaining from time to time about how "I don't have a ton of pictures to post of Novel since my camera broke." Well I'm here to tell you today that that simply isn't - and wasn't true.

 I promise I wasn't willfully deceiving you. I just don't have the greatest picture organizing skills, apparently. However, for Novel's matriculation, I was asked to provide a few pictures of him for use in the ceremony. Being the OCD perfectionist that I am, I had to go through all my pictures (yes, every single one) over the past year and a half and pull out all the ones of Novel so I could choose the 'very best' pictures for the ceremony.

Guess what? I have over 1500 pictures and nearly 100 videos of Novel. The folder takes up 14.5 GB of space on my computer. That's a lot. Well anyway it is for my little $300, five year old, 230 GB laptop.

Believe it or not, I actually went through them all just to pick out 6 that I thought represented the best of Novel. (Well ok, 5; one had to include me, and since I have so few pictures of Novel and I together that aren't selfies, it was a little less than perfect)

I'm so glad I did. Picture after picture, many of which I had forgotten I had, had me grinning ear to ear with the memories they brought back. Is a picture worth a thousand words? Undoubtedly yes. And so, in order to save you an ear full, here are a few of my favorites that never made it onto my blog:

The time when I first met him in the airport!

The time when he first attempted the stairs...boy was he worried

The time when he first visited the vet

The time when....well, lets just say that you would never guess what was happening
behind me at the moment I took this picture...

The time when he first held his down/under for more than 5 minutes without whining.
Believe me, this was huge. Which is why I have a picture of it.

The time when he found a glove in a snow cave and proceed to
 play keep-away in our un-fenced yard for what seemed like forever,
scaring me to death and making me late for school.

The time when we were drenched by a downpour at school and Novel smelled
like a wet dog for the rest of my classes

The time when Novel decided to hide under the laundry basket

The time when Novel was "in the stocks"

The time when Novel decided to ride on the cart at Lowe's all on his own.
Just because.

Nashville

July 20th Novel and I got to attend a puppy raising workshop!

Can I just say that it was Wonderful? I learned SO much, met so many great people and dogs, and Novel and I both had fun through it all. I left refreshed, reinvigorated, and more excited than ever about the CCI cause. Admittedly I awoke the next day completely drained of all energy, but it was definitely worth it.

Yeah. He's just a mess.

 Novel and I carpooled over to Nashville (approx. 6 hour drive) the evening before with our own, friendly, neighborhood fellow puppy raiser and her puppy in program Puck. Novel and Puck had some fabulous times together on this trip, and actually shared toys quite nicely.

 When we finally got to Nashville, we drove around for probably an hour looking for our hotel. The GPS said that we were right. there. but we couldn't see the hotel anywhere. We drove up and down the road over and over again carefully searching both sides of the street for our hotel without success. It didn't help that it was a very business-y, lanscaped, parking-lot-y, confusing, long street, or that none of the signs were above tree level. We finally stopped at a gas station to ask where it was, and the man behind the counter suggested that we drive further down the street:

"The address you're looking for is in the 900's. You are only in the 300's. Drive down to the other end of the street and look there"

Well we took his advice. We drove way down the street without any iota of success. We drove back for another careful look at the spot where the GPS said it was and finally found it. It had gotten darkish by this time, and all the signs were lit up so we could actually see it. Wanna guess where it was? Just behind the gas station where we had asked for directions. We felt enormously stupid, but you can be sure that I was more than a little annoyed with the man behind the counter.

That was by far the worst and only bad part of the trip. Ok, maybe not the only bad part; Novel vomited in his kennel at the end of the day. Just another reminder that he might get released for medical reasons...which would really stink. But the rest was all puppies and roses. Literally. Ok, not the roses part. But we did have good food if that counts for anything.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was Finally getting to meet Hannah, Dante, and Moray in person!! It was kinda crazy...felt sorta like meeting a celebrity, but it also felt like I had known her, if not for years, for months at least :)

Da boyz.
Yes, I promise you, Novel IS in that kennel beside Puck.
He seems to like invisible mode.

See?

The adorable and talented Moray working with our regional PPM

The adorable and talented Dante being polite while Novel scoots his
rude little mug closer and closer and closer for a better smell.

Yeah, Novel that's just a little too close. You were kinda supposed to be in a down.

Now that's much better.

Novel, Puck, and Dante

I love the expression on Puck's face

The entire group of puppies, puppy raisers, graduates, and graduate dogs

Just a few more weeks of crazy...

I know I said I would feed y'all a steady drip of blog-reader-food, and I'm really sorry it hasn't quite happened like I had hoped. Life has a remarkable way of slipping past quicker than I realize, and things to do back up and the post I want to write gets put off for "just one day" until I can get this that or the other done.

At the moment, I am sitting in a basement hundreds of miles away from Novel. I've been catching up on all the puppy raising blogs I follow and it seems that everyone is either turning in a puppy or preparing for team training. These weeks just before turn in are such a sad, exciting, mildly terrifying, BUSY time. The dreaded "envelope" has arrived, the vet has been visited, papers have stacked up, papers have been filled out, papers have been mailed back, and a certain black puppy has had just a few more pats and kisses and snuggles than is exactly normal.

On top of that, I am preparing to attend a new college this fall. Which just so happens to start the day after Novel goes to AT. So I've had mountains of paper work to deal with and wrinkles to iron out for that...and I haven't even registered for classes.

Oh, why am I sitting in a basement hundreds of miles away from Novel you ask? I'm visiting my sister in Wisconsin. I'll be here for a week, and it has been really wonderful, but it is hard to be gone from Novel so close to turn-in. I want to really savor the last days I have with him. I feel like I should be really focusing on polishing up our commands. But at the same time, I know I need to start letting go of him emotionally. Oh, I'm going to miss the bugger.

This dude!!

In the mean time, Novel is staying with a friend from work. (The drive was simply to long to think of having 4 people plus a dog in our little car. And we were a little worried about how my sisters doberman would handle having another dog in her house. I know Novel is well taken care of and enjoying himself immensely in my absence :) When I get back, I will have just over a week left with him...which is quite the breath-catching thought....

What will I ever do without this silly mug?