I just found a couple of pictures taken of Ramon and his sister Rory
and puppy club when they were first old enough to there. 
Ramon is on the left side
of each picture. Ramon was the smallest of his litter and was
smaller than Rory until about a year.
Somewhere I also have prints of a picture of Ramon with his brother
Rowan. We met Rowan at the Newark Airport trip when Ramon was
about 11 months old. At the time, Ramon was about 55
pounds. Rowan was about 105 pounds. While they did have
some similarity in coloring, people were quite surprised to hear they
were related.
And here is a copy of the postcard that we got from Ramon's trainer
saying he passed his midterm. (Whew!)
On April 15, 2004, I went to watch Ramon's Town Walk. I'm not
entirely sure what the point of the exercise was. I had thought
it was an exam. Now I believe that it was just a demonstration
for me. In any case, it was quite nice to see it. This was
the last time that I will ever see Ramon unless something exceptional
happens. It's amazing to see how much he's settled with training,
but also to see how much he's still the same wonderful puppy. I'm
very proud of him. There
was a volunteer who walked with me to tell me what was going on.
We had to keep a certain distance from Ramon since they didn't want him
to be confused having transferred his bond to his trainer. Since
the pictures were taken from a distance and on the fly, sometimes the
focus did not work as well as I would have liked. I suspect that
if I had a better idea of what I was doing that would have helped as
well.
Here is the first picture I got as Rick and Ramon approach across
the street. 
Ramon lead Rick on a short course in Morristown. 
In the next couple of pictures, Rick and Ramon are crossing the
street. Rick would say "Forward" and Ramon had to stop him from
going because there was a car coming and wait until it was safe
to cross. 
I was delighted to see Ramon's reaction when they encountered
another dog (who was being trained by another TSE trainer). I'd
had only limited success at getting Ramon to behave well when he
encountered other dogs. While he was clearly interested in the
other dog, he made me proud at how restrained he was even when Rick
paused to talk to the other trainer. 
Rick and Ramon stopped at one point so that I could get pictures. 
When
Ramon was leading Rick, one thing that surprised me was how much Ramon
looked around. I had somehow expected him to be looking very
intently forward all the time. However, he looked much as he did
when he and I walked in Manhattan. I also saw further evidence
that he was as smart as I've always claimed. Naturally, there
were various obstacles along the path, but it seemed as though Ramon
never really encountered them. It took me about half the walk to
realize that rather than coming up to an obstacle and then navigating
around it, Ramon was anticipating and setting a path that meant he
didn't encounter the obstacle at all.
Here are some pictures of Ramon crossing a street. We were
across the street rather than behind them so they are better than most
of my pictures of his butt. 
This final set of pictures was taken by Janet, the volunteer who
explained to me what was going on. She took my camera up to Ramon
for some close-up pictures. 
After those pictures were taken, Rick brought back my camera and
talked with me for a bit. He spoke very highly of Ramon which was
nice to hear. We talked a bit about the training process that
Ramon had gone through. Rick also said that he thinks he has a
very good match for Ramon in the next class coming in.
When we were done talking, Rick went back over to Ramon who had been
sitting and lying quietly with Janet. Ramon, on seeing Rick,
immediately started jumping and cavorting. I didn't have my
camera ready, so all I got was this. 
It
is nice to have seen his playful side again, if just for a moment.
Here is my last picture of Ramon.
It was taken at The Seeing Eye after Ramon finished training with his
new partner. In their letter, they say that "Ramon was placed with a
79 year old gentleman from Pennsylvania, who is a Retiree."