I was hanging out this morning and got an e-mail message stating the transport was running an hour early. This is unusual. Apparently the first person had to take off early and so it set the thing off much earlier than anticipated. It really says something about the type of people involved in these transports. Every single on of us was able to do it an hour earlier than planned. So instead of taking off around 11:15am, I left at 10:15am. I stopped for a quick lunch and arrived just a few minutes before the person I was meeting. Perfect timing!
Poor Sprite. He's a 5 month old Aussie, all white deaf. Adorable as can be. But obviously he's been through a lot. He's super friendly but a bit skittish. He did not want to get out of the crate in the SUV. We ended up pushing the crate back as far as we could and coaxing him out. The person I met lifted him out and then he was ok. He shook it off and wandered around for awhile.
Getting him into my car was difficult as well. The other person tried to lift him but had trouble with it. Finally she just swooped in to grab him and he sort of freaked out, snapped at her (but didn't make contact). I suspect the issue was that he couldn't hear her and she just grabbed him suddenly. She went to her car to find some treats and I decided to tempt him in with my fuzzy squeaky ball. I got him interested in it, tossed it a few times and then tossed it into the car. He wasn't quite willing to jump up, but put his front feet up. So I rubbed his belly and petted him and then got my arm beneath his rump and helped him up. No problems.
We spent the first little while before we took off playing with the ball and having a ton of fun together. He was such fun puppy. We played tug with the ball, he chased it in the little space he had. He kept standing on the console between the seats and bopping me in the face with his nose. Once he tried to grab my hair (no go there puppy!). He definitely needs to learn a bit of bite inhibition (he tried to grab the ball at the same time I did and got me instead...ouch!). No breaking of the skin but it definitely hurt! So he's got some manners to learn but oh did I enjoy him!
He played for awhile as we set off, occasionally came to visit me, and about 30 minutes into the trip up north he fell soundly asleep. When we arrived in town and I had to drive through town, stopping at lights, he woke up briefly and then fell asleep again, this time with his nose on the "snout rest" (read: console), the same place Dahlia loves to lay on car trips.
The hand off happened easily enough. Getting him out of the car was difficult but I managed to coax him out. And he was easy to pick up for me to put into the next vehicle. I was sad to see him go!
