Quick update and Rocky leaves on Friday

Just wanted our readers to know that we are still here, but it has been crazy! Spike, Rocky’s brother, came to stay for a week while his raisers went out of town. It is amazing how Rocky and Spike love each other so much; they would rather play with each other than a pack full of other dogs.

Rocky will be leaving Friday morning to head back to Southeastern. I know he is ready and will make me proud. He is traveling back with a former puppy raiser and board member who I know will take super good care of my little boy. Rocky will be traveling down with her, and be dropped off at the school Saturday afternoon. I also found out the other day that Spike will also be dropped off around the same time on Saturday. I know that they will enjoy starting the new chapter of their life even more now that they get to start it together. They will keep each other company.

Rocky has gotten to say good bye to most of his friends and fans and made some of them cry already. He has one more day of going to class with me tomorrow and I know there will be some very sad people. Rocky has been going to class with me since he was about 12 weeks old and has made lots of friends, especially all the ladies in my sign language class; there are not many of us left as people have dropped out along the way, but they love Rocky to death and have enjoyed having Rocky apart of our class since August. He also has so many friends in student life that he has to go say bye to.

I am taking it as a sign that Rocky is truly ready to go back when we have seen most of the service dogs on campus in the last week or so after going there almost 2 years and only seeing one or two once in a while. I think it is kind of interesting that most of them are yellow labs and they all perk up so much when they see another dog.

I have finished up all of Rocky’s evaluations and forms, have had his health stuff sent to the vet at school twice (our vet was switching to a new computer program) and have done most of my to do list of 'things to do before Rocky heads south'. I also told Rocky that he is leaving , he took it better than I thought :) but I truly think he knows something is up, he is quite a smart boy. Rocky has been playing with all of his toys making it quite difficult for me to conclude what his favorite toy is so that I can set it aside once he leaves. I'll give it to him later, when he graduates. He has about 20 toys and bones that he loves; I guess I get to pick for him.

Since I would much rather spend time with Rocky right now than blog, I will post about some of his adventures he had in his last few weeks as a puppy in training in the next week or so.