Nova here, fresh off my adventures with a puppy sitter for a whole month while my raisers were busy with something very, very important. It was really good for me to experience a new handler for a long time, we learned a lot together! I practiced my loose-leash-walking on the opposite side to how my raisers train with me so now I’m awesome walking on both sides! I’m really proud of this, especially with how I am making great choices to stay in position and ignore distractions when I’m out and about.
And speaking of that, I went to so many new places and met many new people and dogs while I was on my sitter sabbatical! I went on in-cape outings to the malls, and individual stores including two different pet stores (wow! The smells!!) and I helped my sitter at her work, the dentist and the doctor and I was there for when she got her shots (her vet was a different one from mine). I went to a cool historic farm site and was a good girl inside the farmhouse, had so many on-leash trail walks/sniffaris and one epic adventure in the big forest in Vancouver where I went off-leash with my new friend advanced PADS dog, Mercedes. My recall is awesome but this adventure was as big as the forest for me so we changed from off-leash to on-leash frequently so that I could learn to be calm in the presence of so many amazing stimuli!
I went across to the USA to spend the weekend with my sitter and her friends and we stayed in an Air BnB and I had so many different experiences including so many new places like a huge grocery store outing (I rocked it) and sleeping in a travel kennel and exploring the beach, watching the seagulls, crows and eagles. I was fascinated by the tide and my favourite thing was to jump on the logs and look at the ocean swishing in and out.
I rode on the subway to the big city and experienced life in a downtown office – a very different experience from my normal daily routine. Many people wanted to know about me, and I said hi to some of them, with permission, of course, and I was a pretty awesome ambassador for PADS if I do say so myself.
Sitter says I was easy to work with, I adapted to her life in no time and was an awesome houseguest! She and I both hope we can see each other again, but I’m home with my raiser family now and I’ve got some big, new and very exciting things to explore there now, as I’ve just learned!
Until next time, thanks for following my journey as a PADS puppy-in-training!
PADS Nova III
Submitted by: Caroline, PADS Puppy-in-Training Sitter
