Visiting the Red Tent

In her temporary tent

Chris and I made the trek up to Sylmar today to visit Dylan.  Getting there is really a pain.  You have to either drive through downtown, up the westside through Mulholland, drive just east of downtown up the 5 and past Dodger Stadium or go through Pasadena.  With opening day today for the Dodgers (hope they won), we left a bit early and missed the heavy traffic up the 5 but came back through Pasadena.  Traffic sucked, but it always does in L.A.

You have to call ahead to arrange your visit and then check with the area leaders to see if anyone has a puppy that either needs to be dropped off or picked up or if there is medicine to be picked up or a leash that was left.  It's a common courtesy for all puppy raisers to do this because of the traffic.  We did the latter two.  Picked up medicine and a left leash.  We were hoping that one of the puppies, Bravo, was out of heat and we could bring her home, but the stars were not aligned and she was still in heat and in the red tent.

We arrived around 11:30 and were lead to the area where they keep the females in heat.  To say Dylan was happy to see us would be understating her response.  She peed all over herself and ran around for 15 minutes.  It looked like she had grown or filled out or something in just the 6 days since I left her.  She just looked bigger.  Once she settled a bit we played and played and gave her some treats and played some more.  We worked in a couple of sit/stay and down/stay commands just to be sure she had not forgotten everything we had taught her.  The treats helped.  The staff there are great and make sure you have all the time you need to see and interact with your puppy.  We took up one of Dylan's toys but really didn't need to as they have a bunch of toys there.  Plus a swimming pool.  Pretty cool!

When it was time to leave, we put Dylan back in her kennel area and left.  She seemed ok and didn't cry or bark.  However, I made the mistake of leaving the toy we brought and instead of just leaving it, I went back in to retrieve it.  BIG MISTAKE!  When she saw me again she would not stop barking and cried like crazy.  Damn, I should have left the toy.  We plan on going again next week.

Some pictures of our visit:

Happy to see us and wanting to play

A few sit/stays and down/stays

Some more play time

Doing the frog...

Trying to get a selfie with Dylan.  Forget it!

At our area meeting last night, we agreed to puppy sit this weekend for Jefferson.  He's a 17 month old Lab who is being turned in for formal training in May.  That is a big milestone and we all are hoping he makes it through formal training to become someones guide dog.  That's what its all about!