Notes from a volunteer puppy raiser: Maya

That brings up to dog #5 who is my current dog, Maya. She is Eddie’s half sister and looks just like him, but a bit smaller. She is very exuberant and confident, but cooperative and helpful. To help ease the stress of moving to Anacortes, I bring her visiting families and classrooms, and leave her there, to see that life goes on quite happily without me. She was a weekly guest at a second grade where the kids really loved her. They gave her a crackerjack birthday party when she turned one – handmade cards, gifts, party hats, treats, the works.

She has great public access skills and does well in markets, big crowds, very noisy places. Her breeder, Sharon, works very hard with her pups before she sends them into the world. She does early neurological stimulation with them just after they are born, desensitizes them to hats, umbrellas, gunshots, surprises as well as socializes them to a variety of folks. Maya is not comfortable with balloons flying over her head, but not much else bothers her.

She now has her baby sister, Chloe, who is her full sister and just a year younger, living with us. One of Maya’s self-appointed jobs is cleaning Chloe’s ears whether they’re dirty or not. And, of course, Maya is a great chew toy for Chloe who attacks her with a ferocious vigor. They were both with me at the Pierce Co.Humane Society’s Dogathon where we had our Summit booth. Maya worked, did demos, and schmoozed for five hours without complaint while Chloe waited patiently behind the booth. I couldn’t ask for two better girls.

Maya will be moving up to Anacortes in September for her final training, and, hopefully, graduation. You’ve seen that my other 4 dogs had ‘career changes’, and I am no longer so confident to think that just because I work hard to train the dogs, that they will ‘make it’. It’s an awful lot to ask a dog to do the job of a service dog, and most of them just aren’t made for that type of work. But I am hopeful about Maya. Either way, she will be a working dog: either she graduates the program and gets a life partner, or she goes back to her breeder to begin life as a mother dog, another job that she could do very well. I’ll keep you all posted on her progress. That’s all for now.

Donna