Picture of Harry

Hi. My name is Harry, I'm a Guide Dog Puppy in Training and this is my Blog.

Atherton Appeal

Harry supported Guide Dogs' appeal to equip the brand new training school for the North of England at Atherton. He was keen to help as he was to be one of the first puppies to train at the new school.

Harry was at the launch of the appeal on 7th October 2008 where he got to meet the Press. One of the newspaper articles can be seen here.

March 12, 2008

Weekly Update – 8 weeks

Today Harry turned 8 weeks old and has been at Number 58 for a whole week. It’s been a week of great changes for us as we’ve adapted to living with a puppy again, and a week of steep learning for Harry. And then there were the sleepless nights, but more of them later.

Harry’s had quite a busy time this week, getting out and about in the village. He’s been on visits to the barbers, the local library, newsagent, butcher, greengrocer and even popped his head in to say hello at the local art class.

When Harry arrived he weighed 5.8 kg and his tail measured 6 inches (15cm for those of you in metric-land) today his tail measures 7.5 inches (19 cm). We took a trip to the vet to get him weighed and Harry tipped the scales at 7.1 kg. Now that’s a weight gain of 1.3 kg, and when you consider that we’ve only fed him a total of 1.5 kg of food over the last week, it makes me wonder how come there’s been so many little deposits to pick up. Just doesn’t seem logical somehow.

Over the last 7 days Harry has learnt his name, taken to wearing his collar like a pro and most importantly of all, learnt some table manners at meal times. He no longer dives head first into his food as if it was the last ever scrap of food on earth and now waits patiently for the command that indicates he can go ahead and eat.

And the last 7 nights? Well, they have been interesting. Harry is obviously a party animal and likes nothing more than to have an all night rave up. Harry has his own soundtrack to dance to, a kind of vocal solo, and the louder the better. Over the last two or three nights he’s taken a few power naps while at the party, so we’ve managed to grab a couple of hours sleep, but at 2am and 5am (and numerous other times in between) he’s been awake and ready to party again and again. Then last night something strange happened. As we tiptoed up the stairs there was no howling, we cleaned our teeth and still there was silence. Still holding our breath we crept into bed. The silence was deafening. This was just too good to be true, but hang on a minute, what if he wasn’t well, what if he’d stopped breathing? The call of the pillow was too alluring, the need for sleep too compelling and common sense won out. Seven hours of pure blissful uninterrupted sleep followed. And there he was at 6am, still breathing, all bright eyed, bushy tailed and raring to go. It seems though, that Harry has learnt one vital lesson about all this late night partying.

The lesson? Well, not even puppies look their best the morning after the night before.

Hungover pup