My life so far

I was born to the best mom in the whole world. I lived with my mom and my siblings and my mom's pack leader, or what the humans call a breeder caretaker. My human tells me these humans are all amazing. I got lots of petting and cuddling. I played a lot. Here I am learning the importance of snuggling and snoozing. I'm the white one under the other slightly darker yellow one.

Then my mom's pack leader loaded up all me and all my siblings in some crates and took us to the CCI kennels. We stayed there for a short time. I got to play in the puppy park with my siblings. I played with my 3 siblings in the puppy park. Then I got sent to two puppyraiser families in Seattle.

Can you believe that TWO families wanted me?

My best friend ever Moxie played with me and showed me the ropes and also was the best head rest in the world. Moxie is what the humans called Change of Career Dog. Moxie well, Moxie has a lot of energy like me, but she is still excited when the humans want focus, or what the humans call work.

See here I am as a puppy focusing. Focusing is very important if you want the exciting life of an assistance dog. That means you need to pay attention to your human and ignore other things even really great things like FOOD and TENNIS BALLS. The thing is that the right human will give you food and tennis balls at other times. And the human will praise you for picking things up (you heard me right my fellow retrievers) and tugging on a rope and my favorite standing up on your hind legs and hitting things with your paws. These make the humans happy and you get PRAISE.

I went to puppy classes and I learned a whole lot and I got to meet some other nice dogs with their wonderful humans. And when I understood what my puppyraisers said and did it, I made my puppyraisers happy, which made me happy. I went with my puppyraisers all around to a lot of human places. I had to learn my assistance dog rules which is not doing fun things like sniffing or eating food off the ground and some obvious things for any dog who knows their place in a human pack like respecting your human's territory, but I really liked wearing a cape and having people talk to my humans about how special and beautiful I was. First I wore a puppy cape then when I got bigger, I wore a bigger cape. I liked going around human places, and having people tell me what a good dog I was, so I kept on doing on it. I still got to play too.

Now I'm in the kennels at Canine Companions for Independence (CCI) learning how to be a service dog. I have a trainer. I am part of a string of dogs. I went on several field trips. I get to play everyday too with my friends. There's a big field to play in. It's fun. Then I go back to the kennel and play with my roommate.