Hardy, the Seeing Eye puppy

I'm raising my second puppy for the Seeing Eye.  I will have him until he's somewhere between 12 and 18 months old.  My job is to teach him basic commands (sit, rest, etc.) and to expose him to many different situations, people, and places.  After that, he'll go back to the Seeing Eye, will undergo medical tests to make sure that he doesn't have any hidden problems (e.g., bad hips) and then will train for somewhere between 4 months and a year.  That's when he'll learn to wear a harness and lead someone.  When that's finished, he'll be assigned to a partner, they will train together for another 3-4 weeks and he'll go off to work.

At about the same time as I got Hardy, I got a digital camera.  Rather than mailing all the inevitable dog pictures to everyone I know, I figured it'd be more polite to toss them up here so that people can claim to have seen them without having to actually look at 4,000 pictures of a dog.

Hardy was born on 11/12/03.  By 8 weeks, he weighed 11.2 pounds.  Once again, I have a small pup.  Apparently he is smaller than his sister.  He's stuck at home until 2/25/04 while he grows enough to get all his shots.

My first pup, Ramon, is back at Seeing Eye in training now.

Pictures

This is a typical picture of Hardy looking up to see what I'm up to now.  (Each of the images on this page is a link to a full size image.)

Here is a picture of Hardy lying next to his crate getting ready for a nap.  I'd forgotten the digital nature of puppies.  Hardy is either going as fast as he can or napping most of the time.  This is an odd picture in that it shows calm and wakefullness simultaneously.

In addition to Hardy, we have three cats.  One of these cats, Bailey, is neurotic.    This picture shows her attempting to hide behind some clean laundry.  She's very curious about Hardy, and sometimes will be in the same room with him, but she's basically convinced he's a bad idea.  Another, Puff, knows that Hardy is a bad idea and is trying to figure out what he can do about it.  If he comes to an area near Hardy, even if Hardy is ignoring him, he'll hiss at Hardy just to make sure everyone knows his feelings.  As such, this is a rare picture of Puff in close proximity to Hardy.  (Puff was happily asleep when I sat down.  Not long after this picture was taken, he woke and left.)  Here's another one with Puff.  Over time, Puff has learned that a quick application of claws is quite effective with Hardy.  As such, he's more willing to have Hardy watching at a distance.  

The third cat is Sabrina.  She was the most tolerant of Ramon and is the most tolerant of Hardy.  She'll even put up with him chewing on her tail while she's eating.  (Sabrina is very focused on eating.)  She does tend to trot away from him if he's getting too obnoxious, but she doesn't even seem to have the sense to swat him.  In this picture, Hardy has been forced to give Sabrina some peace.

Before Ramon arrived, I was told to get (amongst other things), two ceramic bowls heavy enough that a puppy wouldn't be inclined to move them.  I wasn't quite sure how much food Ramon would be eating by the time he left, so went for large bowls.  Even when he was eating only two meals a day, it turned out that the bowl rather dwarfed his food.

Hardy, however, got the bowls as hand-me-downs.  Hardy quickly learned that chasing ½ cup of food around that bowl was easier if he put  in the bowl.  (As it turned out, Ramon never tried to move his bowl even when I fed him from a light plastic bowl.  Bailey, however, loves to move water bowls and would happily drag these bowls around the kitchen, slopping water everywhere.)

These pictures tell us something about evolution.  If puppies were not this cute, would they survive housetraining, teething, crying through the night....

Here is one of Hardy pretending to sleep, but actually growing.    And here's more growing at about 5 months.  Here's another after he's been rooting around in the snow.    With his fast, puppy metabolism, it seems that the snow generally melts before I have a chance to grab the camera.

At 12 weeks, Hardy's left ear muscle seems to be trying to raise his ear.  The ear isn't stiff enough yet leading to scenes like this.   Shepherd owners seem (near as I can tell) to have a fixation with their dog's ears and when they stand up.  I seem to have caught this leading to the following pictures:  One of my favorites shows Hardy with his head tilted back just enough to get his left ear to stand up. And a few days later, his right ear is a little further along.   And here, he finally has them up (although they droop when he's tired.)   Oddly, shortly after I took that picture, both ears drooped to the side (rather than forward as above).  His left ear is back up again, but his right ear droops varying amounts at varying times.    Actually, these show his right ear further up than is typical these days.  His ear is often completely flopped over giving him a cute look.  Given a bit of time, I'm sure he'll learn to work that cuteness factor.

One of the things I didn't know before Ramon was how much dogs love to chase tennis balls.  Ramon was never so tired that he wouldn't chase a thrown tennis ball.  Hardy gets distracted before that point and doesn't bother to retrieve the ball, but he does seem to love chasing them for a little while.  He does sometimes decide that I don't let him get enough chewing in, so will sit on the floor and work at it.  

On 2/3, Hardy got his first greenie and his first sterilized bone.  I didn't get the camera out quick enough for the greenie, but here are some bone pictures.  They were a bit hard to take since Hardy was hiding in the corner and quite concerned that my taking pictures might in some way result in him losing his bone.  
And this picture would seem to show that Hardy is actually growing.  It's hard for me to see, but looking at the pics here, I guess he is.

We recently visited my Mom in Arizona.  She has a Cockapoo named Brandy.    The week before the trip, we visited Newark Airport with 4-H.  That's always one of my favorite trips.  Here are a couple of pictures of Hardy on a United Airlines plane.    It is hard to see Hardy in the second photo.  He's under the seat in front of me.  We flew America West to Arizona.  They were quite helpful and friendly about transporting Hardy.  I was also very proud of how quietly he was able to sit for the entire flight.

When we went on vacation recently, Hardy was going to have to spend a week in the kennel. He didn't like that prospect, so he got an invitation to stay with some friends for the week including spending a weekend in the Hamptons. Here is a picture of Hardy with his friend Noah.