Hello from Emlyn

Dear Ma Doux,

I'm so glad you liked the chocolate puppy. Wait till you see what's coming next! It's a chocolate version of one of my favorite toys! And I'm not saying anymore as it's a surprise!

Well, my BIG NEWS is that I graduated from puppy kindergarten this past Monday.....phew! Here's my diploma. I wasn't sure I was going to make it.

Adele was in England for ten days, so Della took me to class last week, but because she hadn't been there with me before (she has had school/work, but now she's on summer break) she wasn't really up on the skills I was supposed to know, and I pretended I hadn't done them hardly at all. Also, it was REALLY hot that day, and I discovered that the linoleum was much cooler than the rubber mats where I was supposed to be working. So I kept lying down on the cool linoleum, and then I discovered that if I grabbed the leash in my mouth and rolled over onto my back with my paws in the air, Della couldn't do much to get me up and back on the rubber mats! Ha ha! The teacher said something about "The terrible two's..." Could it have been ME she was referring to?

So, the point of telling you this is when Adele got back from England on Monday, she went ahead and took me to my final graduating class that afternoon where I was supposed to run through everything perfectly so I could get my diploma.

I started off pretty sharply with some excellent heeling and sitting. (Oh, I have to tell you about my goofy collar. It's one of those bright orange nylon ones with a see-in-the-dark strip. We've had weeks of rain here, and my leather collar has been non-stop wet, and because it's old - other puppies have had it before me - the stitching must have rotted because it broke. So Della found this in the dog closet, and because it's nylon it worked well for our wet walks. I now have a new leather one, but I had to wear this one last Monday as I didn't have my new one yet.)


After we had all run through our stuff as a large group, each dog and handler had to go by themselves, and the rest us could just relax. At that point, I remembered about the cool linoleum, and made a dive for it. When Adele said "Come" I wouldn't get up.









So she came over and told me to stand and come back to the mat. I pretended I had never heard the word "Stand" in my life, but kept an interested look on my face, as if I were trying hard to cooperate.













Then I pretended to be deaf!















Then I pretended to be dead!










Adele was starting to get a bit frustrated with me, so I decided to throw in the grab-leash-in-mouth-and-roll-on-back move that had been so successful the previous week. Adele got the leash out of my mouth, and then was trying to jolly me out of my badness with a tummy scratch, which I totally didn't deserve. She was starting to laugh at that point!









But then she pulled out her secret weapon - liver treats - and I instantaneously shaped up. Can you tell how much I want that treat?










So then I realized it was time to get a grip and get serious. I did a pretty good job with all the heel, sit, stay, down, come, finish stuff, and then I was the very best of all going through the tunnel and down the ladder and through a raised hoop. I think agility might be in my future. I'm not sure it's in Adele's future, though, as she could never catch me in time at the other end of the tunnel because it was long and I zipped through it so fast!







Where were you? I've been here for ages! Did you see how fast I went through that thing?













And then came the proud moment when I got my diploma and was officially graduated from puppy kindergarten. (There's the ladder in the background that I skipped through.) About one second after that picture was taken I made a grab for my diploma which is why it looks a bit crushed in the big picture up top.

So I hope you like seeing all these pictures of me on my blog. Now that I know how to do this, I can send you some more. I hope you're doing OK with the chemo. I'm sending you my most powerful licks and wags to help you feel better!

Love, Emlyn
(aka Oahu Emlyn Elf - my official registered name. Elf is for LF = left front = my first name!