Welcome to Peaceable Paws!
First – and most important – all of us at Peaceable Paws hope all of you and all of yours are staying safe, sane and well. I feel like we are living in a bad science fiction movie, just waiting for the credits to roll so we can get up and leave. Every day I am struck by how much this has changed – and will continue to change – life as we know it.
I am cautiously excited though… with Maryland’s Governor Hogan starting the reopening process last week in our state we are in the in the midst of plans for a careful re-opening of Peaceable Paws in June. Yay!!!
I will start doing Private Consults again in early June, Group Classes will start in the middle of the month, and Trainer Academies are a go in July, starting with our first Level 1 – Basic Dog Training and Behavior for the year, July 13-18. We have rescheduled three academies previously planned for April (Level 1), May (Cognition), and June (Behavior Modification) for later in the year. All students previously registered for Classes and Academies that had to be cancelled received credits, and have been given first opportunity to sign up for the new classes. If the new dates don’t work for them, their credit is good for as long as needed for them to be able to use it. We will be holding our group classes outdoors, following all social distancing and disinfecting guidelines, we will establish one-way traffic patterns, and students will need to wear masks the whole time they are here. (I will be teaching a Fidos on the Farm class, if anyone is interested…) For our Academies, we will do lecture/discussion indoors with appropriate social distancing, and the dog handling/training sessions will also be outdoors. It has been very quiet here… we are so looking forward to having our students back!!!
To sign up for any of our upcoming classes (Puppy Kindergarten, Basic Good Manners, Beyond Good Manners, Fidos on the Farm), click on Training Classes on the drop-down menu under “Programs and Services” on our website. And we still have openings in our “Brain Candy” workshop, August 15-16, if you’re interested in exploring canine cognition
Of course, this all assumes that things don’t suddenly go south on the coronavirus scene. If that should happen, all bets are off and we’re back to square one. We will let everyone know if there are any changes to the plan.
Meanwhile, our belated Spring has finally arrived, just a month shy of the first day of Summer. The Peonies are finally in bloom, the Black-Eyed Susans are just starting to flower, the Hostas are looking good, and this purple thing – whatever it is, is deliriously happy.
I saw a Pileated Woodpecker tapping on a fence post yesterday morning (didn’t have my camera with me, darnit!) – love them!!, our first Tiger Swallowtail butterfly of the season, and this morning while doing barn chores I bumped a horse boot sitting on a shelf in the barn (yes, horses sometimes wear boots) and a Caroline Wren flew out. Inside the boot – 5 eggs. (Carolina Wrens are known for nesting in odd places…) also didn’t get photos because I didn’t want to disturb her nest again.
Meanwhile on the Miller dog scene, Kai managed to get an ulcer on his left eye. He must have poked it with something – either a stick on our hike, or Sunny nailed him while they were wrestling in the barn (Sunny swears it wasn’t him). Sunny does tend to be very “pawsy.” At any rate, it was a trip to the vet on Tuesday (Paul took him) and we were delighted to find that our vet (Dr. Tracy Barlup, Longmeadow Animal Hospital) is now having you wait in your car in the parking lot but allowing one person to come into the clinic with the dog. Kai is very good at the vet hospital, but I while I understand the need, I was still very unhappy about the idea of them taking him inside without one of us. Although he is still squinting, his eye seems to be healing (thankfully he is very good about medicating) – he goes back this Tuesday for a follow-up visit. And this reminds me of the value of helping your dog be comfortable with medicating – if we were having to put medicine in Sunny’s eye we’d be facing a challenge. Guess I’d better get working on that…
Kai’s injured eye
I’m innocent!
That’s it for now… Please let us know if we can be of service to you and your animal companions — and STAY WELL!!!
War Woofs,
Pat