Rocko’s Modern Life
Now that I’m home for break, I decided that it is a prime opportunity to tell you about my family’s current guide dog-in-training, Rocko. The last time my family trained a guide dog through Guide Dogs of America, my sister and I were both in Nashville when they picked her up (AKA when she was a wrinkly little pup). I didn’t get to see her till she was almost four months old, so when we decided to train another puppy, my sister and I were insistent that we pick it up while we were both at home–and we were conveniently asked to pick up puppy number 2 while we were home in August!
Meet Rocko:
He immediately fit into the family, and was smothered with love and hugs all around:
Here we are, right after we met:
You can see it was love at first sight. (He tried to bite my nose.)
Fast forward three months, and Rocko and I were reunited in Phoenix, AZ at club soccer nationals. He looked a bit more like this:
It was astonishing to see how much bigger he’d gotten since I had seen him last, but definitely cool to see how far his training had come. Since we are not professionals, the training that we do is pretty basic–things like basic obedience, eating on command, and ignoring people food. Along with that though, our most important job is to get the dog used to being around people and going EVERYWHERE with us. And I do mean everywhere–from the grocery store to church to picking my brother up from school. Not only does this get the dog used to interacting with people, it also raises awareness about Guide Dogs of America–we’re always happy to answer questions about what Rocko is being trained for and how we got involved in the organization!
(also, I give unto you the gift that is the guide dog puppy cam)