Today was Poppy’s first puppy training class! She did really well – and so did her littermate, Pongo. I’ve been been practicing basic commands with Poppy since last Saturday and the GDA trainer, Hanna, did an awesome job in class today. I got some really good tips – Hanna is a great teacher and enthusiastic cheerleader.

So, here’s an interesting fact that you may not know: a guide dog, when traveling in a car, bus, train, or airplane with their human, sits on the floor at their human’s feet curled up in a little ball. As a puppy raiser, it’s my job to begin this training as soon as possible. Since I was uncertain how to do this driving her by myself, I bundled her up in Daisy’s old puppy Pawaboo travel harness and clipped her into the backseat seatbelt buckle and off we went. I have to admit I was a bit nervous about putting Poppy in the harness (Daisy went berserk when I tried it on her the first time) but Poppy was born for this. She walked around with the harness on like this was her millionth time doing it. Well, OK, I thought, how will she be in the car?

I kept glancing back on her waiting for her to let me know she wasn’t having any and – again – Poppy showed me that she was born for this! She sat up (probably wishing she was bigger so she could look out the windshield) and looked at me as if to say…hey! let’s go! How cool is that! But then I thought, what happens if she goes nuts when we’re on the freeway???

But, one mile into the I-15 North….you guessed it…she was born for this!

After the conclusion of puppy class, Hanna showed me how to travel with Poppy on the front passenger floor. You can either tie down the leash under the passenger seat (if you can) or close the leash in the glove box. I used the glove box method.

At the risk of sounding like a nervous Nellie (I know, too late), but in my defense not having done this before, I was a bit unsure of how Poppy would do…