Tampa Area Puppy Raisers

Saturday, June 6, 2026

Outta here!

Skylar and her family are off for their trip north. (How "not crazy" is that -- getting out of the FL heat?)

And what's a road trip without a stop at Buc-ee's? I can strongly recommend the dark-chocolate-covered cashews -- for mom!

Have some great adventures, Skylar.

Lots of strangeness today

This morning's meeting started with some outdoor skills practice on dog distraction and walking paces.

Once inside, we did some work with clearances -- narrow passageways that a guide dog must learn to negotiate. We had three such passageways: one that the dog and raiser could pass through side by side, one that acted as a chute to "funnel" the team from a wide space to a narrow one, and one that was narrow enough for them to need to pass one at a time. Because a guide dog handler might choose to work two clearances differently, we worked the narrow passage both with the dog leading and with the dog following. The exercise worked well, but the take-home lesson is that we need to look for narrow clearances to practice as we're out and about in the world. All raisers learn to "think like a puppy raiser"; this is just one example.

Buxton

Skylar

Harry

Beacon

Our main activity today was the exploration of "novel objects." This is something that we do all the time in our daily lives -- giving the dogs the opportunity to check out all manner of interesting items. But this meeting loads dozens of oddball things into half an hour! The dogs can be interested (or disinterested), hesitant, or excited, but we hope they won't be frightened. Typically, a hesitant or excited reaction wanes quickly.

One of our raisers has brought and played her viola in past years, but she was out of town today. So we stepped up to the cello. :-) Thank you, Evelyn, for making beautiful music for us. And thank you, Ashley, for being an exceptional music stand!

Harry