People often comment on what a well-behaved dog Hedy is. I smile. They should see her without her harness! She can be a very silly girl. I know what they mean, though. I’ve seen other dogs that drag their people, demand attention when their people are trying to talk to others, jumping up on strangers, stealing food off counters, raiding the trash… For Hedy’s good behavior, I have to give credit to her puppy raiser, Heather, and to the Pueblo puppy raiser club that gave the sixteen year-old girl support as she trained her first guide dog puppy.

When I was putting together my book, “A Gift of Puppies,” I interviewed ten raisers of service dogs and two breeder caretakers. Until then, I had no idea the extent of time and energy that was involved in the eighteen months they socialized and trained the little fluff balls, preparing them for training in their extraordinary responsibilities. And then I started watching “Growing Up Guide Pup,” following Amie and Matt Chapman as they took an eight week-old pup through all its stages so it could be secure and confident, willing and responsive in its work as a guide dog for a blind person. Impressive!

If you wonder how to get your dog to behave better, I recommend checking out their webisodes. Below is a link to their December newsletter, which features a two-part webisode of Hedy and me with Patrick, a German shepherd who needed energy treatments for some behavioral issues. I had been wanting to show how simple energy balance could help a pup with issues release trapped emotions that are contributing to his problems. I believe many dogs are dropped from the program for things that can be easily fixed. These two segments show you how. It works on pets and people too!

Here is a link to the December newsletter.

I asked Matt to tell me how they got started puppy raising and coming to do videos on the internet to let the public come along on the puppy raising adventure. He sent me the following:

…”We did an interview with Marcie Davis who has a podcast called Working Like Dogs. It is my favorite interview because it answers all the questions. How, why, when we got started with GUGP.
Here is the link. Scroll down and click “Listen Now.” It is about 30 minutes long.”…

I listened to this very informative interview and, yes, they answer the question, “How can you let them go?”

I hope you’ll take a look at Growing Up Guide Pup, which has lots of good information on dog training as well as providing pure astonishment at what they did so someone like me could have independence because of a wonderful well-trained dog.