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Daycare Photo Journal
November
2006:
Well, October was a busy, busy month! We had a great time demonstrating
agility, flyball, rally, and competition obedience at
Paws in the Park,
hosted the Obedience
Club of Chattanooga and a huge AKC
Obedience and
Rally trial, held a Rally workshop,
graduated our 13th session of
group classes, and began training our first READ dogs. Dogs
reading?! Well, Border Collies, maybe, but for the rest of them, the
Read Aloud Chattanooga program is about kids reading to dogs. The idea
is to give children a non-judgmental and undemanding audience to
practice their reading skills on. The kids associate reading with all of
the great things about dogs, they become better readers, and hopefully
better humans for spending their time more productively. The dogs get to
visit new and exotic places like churches, schools, and libraries, and
get loved on by kids. And, as dog owners and trainers, we get the chance
to contribute in a way that is personally meaningful and satisfying.
What a terrific concept! The Read Aloud Chattanooga people even
commissioned this ultra-cool mural for our training facility. These
people think BIG - their goal is to have a trained READ (Reading
Assistance Education Dogs) dog for every school in Hamilton County.
We're piloting the training program and certification process now, and
plan to have it ready to roll out by spring 2007. If you're interested,
you can get started now by taking the Canine Good Citizen class and/or
test, then getting certified by Therapy Dogs International. [
More here ]
And, since I have your attention, a couple of
announcements: PDX will be closed for daycare on
Thanksgiving Day (11/23) and the day after (11/24), and the entire week between Christmas and New
Year's Day (12/25-1/1). We'll miss our furry friends, as well as their
generally-less-furry other halves, but we're just about ready for a
long winter's nap. Thanks, and enjoy November's
pictures! -- Bev
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