On Saturday, we had the privilege of attending CCI ‘s graduation ceremony for myself and the other graduates. It started out in the morning with a brunch with the puppy raisers. The people who raised Zeus are a sweet family from Illinois who brought me an album of his puppy pictures. We all enjoyed the morning greatly. They had driven in from the Chicago area for the graduation ceremony. Zeus is the first puppy they raised and he went all the way through the training, which is rare — only 40% of the puppies that are turned in to CCI complete the training and are placed.
Then came a quick graduation rehearsal followed by the hour long ceremony. The ceremony itself started out with a greeting and a tribuite to a former CCI graduate and employee that passed away in February. Then followed the presentation of a new batch of puppies being turned in for training. There were something like 27 dogs on stage. Following a short video dedicated to the puppy raisers, they introduced the graduates and gave us each a mock award patterned after the Academic Awards. I got “Best Able to Communicate” probably because I was continually picking on the trainers and asking superfluous questions.
After a short summary of our experience by our class speaker, they presented us with our public certification and our new service dogs! Zeus is now an offical member of the family.
We left Columbus about 1 PM and headed for home, arriving at 4 AM Minneapolis time. We stopped for supper in IN to introduced Zeus to the Gauglers, long time friends of ours.
Hey Josh. I’m glad you all got home safely.
I’m sure you’re busy introducing Zeus to the neighborhood and everyone you know. (I know I would be, haha.)
I bet Zeus is excited to finally live in a household again. =]
P.S.
Thanks for keeping this blog. It was so interesting to read about your process of going through team training!