This past week was a busy one again. We spent a lot of our time working with Astro, getting him all tooled up to go back home today. Yes, taday is his last day with us. We love Astro, and are so proud of all the work he’s done! We plan on following up, and hopefully working a couple of times a month with his family to keep him on target and working well.

One of the things we have worked on, and feel we have greatly improved, is Astro’s exuberance for finding scent. He was pretty lackadaisical when he first got here. This video shows how much more excited he is to get the scent.

This next video is one I am especially proud of. Astro wasn’t alerting at all to highs, or during the day, or using a bringsel as an alert tool. So we took those as personal challenges. Here, I was lucky enough to have my camera ready when Astro alerted to my daughter’s high BG

I started reading this book on Wednesday. I will let you know what I think we I’m done, but so far, I really enjoy it:

Click the picture to go to Amazon

On Wednesday night we took Major and Astro to rally and had a great training session. It was nice to see that the obedience work we were doing with Astro was easily transferable to another handler.

And of course, we had a week spent with more and more “self control” training. Working on things like place work, down stay, and leave it.

On Saturday morning, we took Astro to Stella’s riding lesson by himself. He did amazing, and gave us his very first public high BS alert, Stella was 245!

Astro resting after his first public alert. He knows his job

Major is a very sensitive dog. He still seems out of sorts over the loss of Tully, and 2 days after that, we brought Astro in. We will be spending the next week or 2 giving him some extra love and reassurance. That process started on Saturday, when we only took him over to Grandma’s house to swim. He enjoyed the extra attention, and alerted to a 45 while Stella was in the pool!

Major loves his new Chuckit bumper

Assuming his rightful spot

Keeping a very close eye on his girl. She was running low while swimming, and he was on it!

tttthhhhhbbbbbbtttttttt!!!!! I love this picture

On Sunday, I took Major for a run early, then gave him the rest of the morning off. We took the love birds, Astro and Raven out for a hike, then some public access training as we went to Subway for lunch, and to a couple of stores to pick up supplies for Stella. She leaves next week for diabetic camp!

Here is Yin and Yang being very good at Subway

We even had a chance to get a few more pictures in of the DAD’s. Having 3 DAD’s in the house has been a lot of work. There is always training going on, and often times it needs to be done individually (like with the scent work). Raven and Astro are both very playful and easily slip into dog mode, so even when letting pups out to go to the bathroom means that they need to go out individually. Everything requires supervision. We are going to miss Astro, he’s a great dog. But we still haven’t had time to miss Tully, and see what life is like with only 2 DAD’s and no pets. Kind of looking forward to it…

But Astro will definitely be missed. I promise, anytime I get an update, I will pass it along. After all, he IS an honorary member of team Blackdogsrule

Today is also the last day to order your shirt. If you haven’t ordered yet and want to, go HERE!

Team Blackdogsrule