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.

May 14, 2008

Weekly update – 17 weeks

Today Harry turned 17 weeks old and it’s now 10 weeks since he arrived at Number 58. On the one hand hand it seems that Harry’s only been here for a relatively short space of time, but on the other it seems as though he’s always lived here. He has made himself such an integral part of our every day lives that it’s difficult to remember what it was like ‘Before Harry’. He has grown from a small bundle of fluff that peed and pooped everywhere, into a confident, inquisitive and adventurous puppy.

Grown is a relatively small word, but in Harry’s case it has a BIG meaning. When he arrived he weighed 5.8 kg, today he weighs 19.8 kg. His tail was only 6 inches (15 cm) but today that same tail measures 13 inches (33 cm). His ears, however, seem to have a life of their own and just keep getting longer, they almost look as though they should be attached to a spaniel, rather than a Labrador/Golden Retriever cross.

In the evening sun

Harry is a very sociable and amiable puppy and has lots of friends in the canine world. Not just the other Guide Dog pups that he regularly comes into contact with, but also the neighbourhood dogs who he meets on a day to day basis.

As the weather has become warmer this week Harry has developed a love of basking in the sun, although we have tried to restrict this to late afternoon or early evening, as he has frequently tried to roast himself alive in the midday sun.

When he’s out on a free run Harry loves to scrabble around in the mud and he’s also taken to digging in the garden with a vengeance. Most of the time he digs in the gravel under the seating area in the garden, usually to bury his bone.

Burying his bone

Today though, he thought it would be great fun to try and escape from the garden by digging a hole under the fence in one of the flower beds. He was ably assisted by his good pal Goldie, and between them they almost managed to dig their way down to Australia. It took the two of them about five minutes to wreak havoc in the garden, and took us about an hour to clean up the mess and rescue what plants we could.

If it was up to Harry to pick his best bit of the week, no doubt it would be today’s Big Dig, but we get to choose Harry’s highlight of the week and we’re choosing his big adventure on the train. An adventure that he’ll be repeating this week.