First Official Outing and Lessons in Futility

Well today was a VERY exciting day! Raelyn went on her first official outing and did splendid!

This morning I had to teach a research class up at Dominican University in San Rafael. We were not planning on doing a whole lot during class, so I decided to take Raelyn with me. She put on her little puppy vest (guide dog in training official uniform) and off we went! She didn't mind having "clothes" on one bit, which was quite surprising... She looks very official and super adorable. :)

She then found herself going back inside her crate once in the car. She was not having any of that and was frustrated, so she whiny barked in the backseat for about 5-10 minutes. I just cranked up the Bon Jovi and sang along while she did some crappy, out of tune back up vocals. ( I have to practice as I'm lead singer for our most excellent band Mario Speedwagon in the Rock Band video game). Finally, I lost my back up singer as she realized she wasn't getting out of the crate so she powered down and went to sleep for the rest of the drive up to Dominican. It is super awesome that she doesn't care about being in the car. Yay!

Once we got to Dominican, there was so much to sniff! She walked on her own part of the way from the car to the science building, but we weren't making as much forward progress as we needed to since class starts at 9 so I carried her the rest of the way. Once we got to the building she was an attention magnet! Everyone wanted to come meet her and she did pretty good. A bit jumpy when she was excited to meet new people, so we will have to work on that. But she was very friendly with everyone and did great with all the touching and petting. Not much was done during class as Raelyn was WAY more interesting than graphs and science projects, but we got the important stuff done. Afterward we hung out in the grassy area outside making lots of new friends while eating super tasty grass and pine cones. No indoor accidents, so our visit was a HUGE success! She doesn't really go potty anyways in new places since relieving is not as exciting as sniffing all the new surroundings.

After we left Dominican, Raelyn was totally pooped and crashed in her crate immediately. On the way home, we had to make a pit stop at the other school I teach at (San Francisco State University) to pick up something in the department office. As she walked/was carried to the building, she loved to watch all of the people walk by on the sidewalk and wanted to make friends with all of them. There were so many people she didn't know where to start sometimes. We made our way to the office and were instantly surrounded by people gushing and fawning all over her and wanting to take her picture. It was like she had her own paparazzi! Again no indoor accidents and very friendly and well behaved the entire time.

Our adventures really wiped her out, so she proceeded to totally crash the rest of the afternoon until almost dinner time.

While Dale and I were eating dinner we discovered that we have another puppy trainer in the house. Shadow (our fraidy housecat) decided to grow a backbone and sit out of reach but in full view of Raelyn. Shadow just watched nonchalantly as Raelyn was going nuts trying to get at her to play. Raelyn would bark and whine and kitty just sat there quietly and patiently licking herself without a care in the world. Dale and I watched on in pure shock... Finally Raelyn figured out that all of the racket wasn't helping her situation so she just shut up and quietly sat back on her haunches. Apparently Shadow is a budding dog trainer.

So to recap what we learned today:
-Raelyn travels like she is a seasoned commuter.

-She thinks everyone is her BFF.

-Raelyn is a charmer and a half, melting everyone in sight and turning them into piles of oogly googly.

-Our cat Shadow is better at ignoring Raelyn than we are.