It has been awhile since I have traveled solo, without a husband or without a dog. This past week I traveled to Florida to attend a veterinary conference, the same conference that I took Patrick to last year. This year was definitely a different experience.
One of the biggest differences was the amount of things that I needed to pack and the amount of room I had in my suitcase. Boy does eight days of food for a growing, high energy shepherd take up a lot of space. The other big difference is having more freedom. Traveling with a puppy is a lot like traveling with a young child, you have to put their needs first. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love traveling with the puppies I raise, but I do have to sacrifice things that I would like to do because of their ability to either handle certain things or needing time off from working. Service dog puppies in training are still puppies and you can’t push them too hard.
“Puppy raisers are always in demand for almost every service dog organization.”
So this year on my trip I did a few things just for me. I got to spend two entire days at Universal Studios and Disney World before the conference began and after the conference ended I spent time at Big Cat Rescue and playing with puppies at Southeastern Guide Dogs. All things that I would have liked to do last year, but things that Patrick either wasn’t ready for or couldn’t attend for obvious reasons.
I would really like to learn more about and visit more service dog schools. The Southeastern Guide Dogs campus just happen to be on the way as I traveled south from Orlando where the conference was to my visit with family and friends in the Fort Myers area. So this year I decided to make time and stop there.
The school has currently stopped tours while they are doing some major construction work (they are building a new puppy facility). But I did plan ahead, on their website they offered other activities for visitors. They offered a puppy kindergarten experience and a guide dog experience. I really wanted to do both, but the times these were offered overlapped and that wasn’t possible. So of course being the puppyaholic I am I chose the kindergarten experience.

Amie’s cousin Monica just melted around all the puppy cuteness.
I did drag my cousin Monica with me, and it was a great experience for her. She got a chance to meet Patrick last year but has never been to a guide dog school. It really didn’t take much convincing…”Hey Monica, do you want to go with me to play with some puppies?” was all it took. It is always really fun for me to bring family and friends with me to things like this, sometimes seeing the campus of the school makes everything more real to them. It really helps them understand why I almost always have a puppy attached to me, what I do is really important.

“This school also depends on volunteers and donations to keep their program going, there is no government funding, and the recipients of their dogs do not pay to receive them.”
For more details on our products and services, please feel free to visit us at: puppy in training, assistance dog, ptsd dog, hearing dog, amobility dog.