Murray for a day and Guide Dogs Christmas Party

I got Murray for the day today. I think he is absolutely gorgeous! His raiser flew to Oregon for her previous dogs graduation (GO CHAMP!!) and then back today so I kept Murray while she was gone. He is a very sweet boy and I really enjoyed having him.

He has a funnier looking run than Sherman. :)

Today was also our Utah State Guide Dog Christmas Party. It was a lot of fun as well. We invited a bunch of kids from the blind center to attend and learn about guide dogs and taking care of dogs and such. We set up stations and each club was in charge of a station where we did a guide dog related activity. Our club did puppy games. We taught the body parts of a dog and then played Simon says using the body parts (Simon says: touch the dogs nose, Simon says: touch the dogs leg, and stuff like that) The other stations were grooming, Juno work, dog training, and what its like to work with a guide dog. It went really well I think. One of the highlights for me was talking to Aerial Gilbert from GDB and her guide Hedda (a Female Black GSD) Hedda is gorgeous by the way. :) I asked her about the new harness. I haven't seen one up close before and she took it off of Hedda and let me look at it. It is so nice. The leather is really pretty on it and the handle snaps off and on really easy. It is really lightweight and seems to contour to the dog better. It looks like it would be a lot more comfortable for the dog too. She was also telling me that she got to try all the prototypes when the new harness was being designed so she got to put a lot of input on how to make the harness better. She really likes it, I can tell why. It is a really nice harness. She is a pretty amazing lady, I talked to her about all that she has been through and about all her travels with her dogs. She has had a pretty exciting life. :) It was a great meeting.

Oh, and I cooked. :) We had to bring a potluck desert, or salad and I am a horrible cook. (I can make a mean bowl of raman thought) I decided to try and bake something. I decided on lemon bars and it went really well I think. They were quite popular, I made a HUGE pan of them and they were gone by the end of the night. (Darn, I wanted to try one.) I got some complements on them too. Maybe I will try to cook something else sometime. :)

After the meeting I took Murray home and I got there just as his raiser got back from the airport. She is a pretty young kid I think 11-13 years. (I am bad at guessing age) It was so fun to hear her talk about Champs graduation. She gave me the whole run through of graduation and it sounds like Champ is going to be just fine. He is already really attached to his handler because when she left to room to line up on stage Champ tried to follow her and was looking for her while they were in the room waiting to go on stage. Champs raiser even showed me a picture of Champ and his new handler. It was fun to talk with her about it we chatted for about a half an hour before I had to go. She was really excited about it. She was telling me all the things she wanted to work on with Murray so that he could be a guide dog too. I really love the youth raisers in our group, they are so enthusiastic and just great dog handlers who raise puppies for the right reasons. :)

Happy Sunday everyone!