Showing posts with label Labrador retriever. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labrador retriever. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

The Money Bird, by Sheila Webster Boneham

Midnight Ink, ISBN 9780738734873,  September 2013

Janet McPhail, photographer and serious dog enthusiast, is back, along with her Australian shepherd Jay, her ex-flower child friend Goldie, and hunky botanist and Labrador retriever owner Tom, as well as the rest of the Fort Wayne dog sports community.

Janet, Tom, and their dogs are out at a privately owned parkland popular for training and exercising retrievers when Tom's Lab, Drake, abruptly abandons the exercise, leaps into the river, and returns from a small island with a blood-soaked canvass bag. Inside the bag is a torn $100 bill, and one red feather, which certainly isn't from any local birds.

This is of course just the tip of the iceberg, and a wild few days including a peculiar local cult, exotic birds, a child (not a dog!) with an excellent set of teeth, a high school crush of Janet's, and Tom's potentially alarming announcement that he and Drake want to "expand their family."

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Bella the Future Service Dog

Today, Addy and I visited our nursing home friends as part of our regular pet therapy visits, and as a bonus extra, we met Bella, a future service dog. She's a sweet, five-month-old black Lab, and like any young dog with a demanding career ahead of her, she needs lots of practice meeting all kinds of people, dogs, cats, and anyone and anything else she might encounter in the course of her work.

The girls were a little doubtful of each other at first, but soon teamed up to sit side by side so that they could both get liver treats. No pictures of that because I couldn't take pictures and dispense treats simultaneously!

Service dogs such as Bella will be go everywhere with the person they're teamed with, including places that dogs are normally banned from. Federal law protects their human partners' right to have their canine aides with them, but the flip side is that the dogs must able to behave anywhere, in any circumstances. Puppy raisers like Bella's current foster family raise and socialize the future service dogs so that they're ready for the demanding training they will begin when they reach one year old.
Posted by Picasa