Birthdayness

 Last Sunday was my birthday, and Dante had a crazy weekend!  

On Saturday afternoon Dante got to go bowling for the first time.  It turned out to be more challenging than I expected.  It was different than any other outing he has done because my family and I were moving back and forth, but he was expected to lay still on a tie-down.  It took pretty much the whole time for him to somewhat understand this, and I think we will definitely be going back.

Dante standing up watching me about to bowl.

"Visit!"

Finally settled down (and NOT eating the shoes, thank you very much).

That night, my mom and sister threw me an (almost) surprise party.  My dad, Dante and I went out for pizza at Mellow Mushroom.  Let me just say, they were fantastic about him!  Oh, my!  It was a busy Saturday night, and they went out of their way to give us a four-chaired table in a corner so that he would be out of sight and have some extra room.  While Dante needs to be comfortable anywhere, it was really nice to have him out of the way (read: hardly anyone interrupted us to comment about him).

When we got back home, Dante was pretty freaked out, as he had never walked into that many people.  My mom took him into the kitchen to get his dinner, and poor thing, didn't want to come back out.  After a few minutes he did, where he realized that all his favorite friends were there, and all was well with the world again.  

My mom, Dante, and a friend.

 Dante spent the rest of the night in his kennel, as he had had enough excitement for one day. 

 Sunday was church, out to lunch, then home while I went to a friend house. After all of this calmed down, we realized that Dante is scared to death of balloons.  Sure he has seen them in stores a bazillion times, but never in his house.  So, this weeks has been filled with lots of de-sesitization  to balloons - even rubbing peanut butter on them.  While he is far from accepting them, I think we are making progress.  The life of a puppy raiser, sometimes it feels like one step forward, two steps back...