How to Exhaust a Puppy

1) Wake her up at 6 a.m. and hustle her down to Balboa Park. Park a good half-mile from the starting area for the Jingle Bell 5K Run/Walk for Arthritis. Try to control her overwhelming excitement at being in a crowd of weirdly dressed humans, French bulldogs decked out as Christmas elves, ubiquitous jingling bells, and other distractions.




Fail to do a good job of handling her. Race walk the course, then back to the car.

My friend Cathy took the leash so I could capture them in mid-stride. 

2) Take her out for several hours of grocery shopping.  I don't have any photos of this phase of the exhaustion process, since it was Steve's week to shop.

3) Ten minutes after getting back from the shopping, load her into the van again and drive to the Del Mar Fire Station for a CCI puppy-training outing for which 27 puppy raisers had signed up. This was exciting for several reasons. 

For one thing, it gave us the opportunity to see her litter mate/sister Demi.

Dionne seemed avidly interested in sniffing her sis. (But then again, she's
pretty interested in sniffing most things.)

Demi lives in San Clemente. Her puppy-raiser Bonnie (for whom Demi is puppy #13!) says Demi is also quite mischievous.

But she seemed awfully well-behaved.

The firehouse sessions provided plenty of other learning opportunities. 

The pups got to walk up to a fireman who was wearing varying amounts of gear. 

Some of it was as weird as the costumes on the Jingle Bell walk.

The firemen also fired up a chainsaw and rolled a stretcher around the bay.

Most of the pups behaved pretty well.  I'm not sure how much fun it was for them. But the puppy raisers had fun posing their charges for photos.

Believe it or not, but his tail was wagging.

Dionne's wasn't. (Her expression read, "What DO you think I am? A Dalmatian?")

Now her expression suggests she's ready for a long winter's nap.