The Pasta Litter Is Here

Late last night (or very early this morning), we welcomed the Pasta litter into the world! SSD Julia gave birth to the first of five puppies at 12:36 a.m. The last puppy was born at 3:07 a.m.

SSD Julia is a first-time mother, but she seems to be taking to motherhood very well. The father is SSD Fire, a big, handsome, dark yellow lab.

Huge thank you to our whelping team for taking such good care of Julia and the puppies during the delivery!

And now, we need your help. The Pasta puppies need names! There are 3 males and 2 females. What do you think these puppies should be called? Leave your pasta-themed name suggestions in the comments. Thank you!

September Is for Puppies

September is going to be a busy month for us. SSD Scotia and SSD Kirby are both going to have puppies!

SSD Scotia was bred to SSD Sweet William. Will was SSD’s founding stud, a handsome yellow lab with a sweet temperament. Scotia is expecting 6 puppies. They should have some very nice pups!

SSD Sweet William

SSD Scotia

SSD Kirby was bred to SSD Meade, our newest stud. This will be both dogs’ first litter. When Kirby had her ultrasound, the vet saw 7-8 puppies. We’re looking forward to meeting them!

SSD Kirby

SSD Meade

SSD Opal and SSD Julia were also bred. Opal traveled to the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind and was bred to Elton, the handsome father of the Shakespearean puppies. Thank you to the Guide Dog Foundation for taking such good care of her during her stay! 

SSD Opal

 

Elton, from Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind

Julia was bred to SSD Fire, a big, dark yellow lab. We won’t know if these two dogs are pregnant until their ultrasounds. 

SSD Julia

SSD Fire

All of these dogs have traits that we are hoping will be passed on to their puppies. We put a lot of thought into our breeding program to make sure that our puppies have the right health and temperament to become successful service dogs. If you would like to learn more about why we breed service dogs rather than train rescue dogs, please read our blog post, “Why Do We Breed Service Dogs?” 

We’re looking forward to an autumn full of puppies!

SSD Gideon’s First Pitch at the Harrisburg Senators Game

SSD Rizzo

SSD Gideon threw out the first pitch at the Harrisburg Senators game on June 6. He put it right in the catcher’s glove!

Watch this black lab put the ball right over the plate.

 

SSD was the community organization of the game, and lots of our puppy raisers and dog in training came out to cheer on the Senators. And they won!

SSD Ripley

SSD Scotia

SSD Seifert

SSD Fire

SSD Dante

It's the Great Biscuit Bite Off at PawsAbilities!

Thank you to everyone who came to PawsAbilities this weekend! We hope you and your dog had a wonderful time. We certainly had fun!

Since so much was going on at PawsAbilities, we're going to do a series of blog posts full of photos and videos from the weekend.

First up is the Great Biscuit Bite Off! This homemade dog treat competition was judged by service dogs in training. We had seven entries this year.

Our first canine judge was SSD Harriet. However, even though she's only one year old, her service dog training is very solid. All of our service dogs are trained that they are not allowed to eat anything off of the floor. Despite the encouragement by her puppy raisers, Harriet was convinced that she was not supposed to eat the treats. We decided that SSD Midge, Harriet's mother, would be the first judge, and maybe Harriet would decide to eat the treats once she saw another dog doing it.

Watch the video of SSD Midge judging the contest. See how she's spun around so that she had to choose a new treat every time.



After Midge tasted all of the biscuits, we gave Harriet another opportunity. Watch her in the video. Look at how solid her service dog training is! Since Harriet continued to focus on her puppy raiser instead of the treats, we brought SSD Rossi to the stage to finish judging the semi finals.



The top four biscuits moved on to the finals. We brought SSD Buster and SSD Fire to be our judges. Buster is only four months old, and this was his first time judging, but watch how quickly he catches on! SSD Fire is one of our veteran judges. Look at how excited he gets because he knows what's coming!



Congratulations to the winners of the Great Biscuit Bite Off!

1st place: Chicken & Cheese Biscuits by Maryann G.
2nd place: Sam & Jarah's Bark for More Biscuits by Nancy V.
3rd place: Peanut Butter Patties by Faith Imler
4th place: Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies by Carrie S.

We'll have more PawsAbilities photos tomorrow!

A big thank you goes out to our amazing volunteers. Without you, PawsAbilities would not have been possible.

Thank you to our sponsors: Faulkner Subaru, Capital Blue Cross, The Phillips Group and WINK 104!

And thank you to all of our staff for working so hard to make PawsAbilities a success.

We hope to see you and your dog at next year's PawsAbilities!

Are there more puppies in our future?

Will it be puppy time again in a few months? We hope so!

SSD Pearl was bred to SSD Fire for the first time yesterday. What a gorgeous day to make puppies! They were able to spend time together out in the sunshine in a small, enclosed portion of the SSD field.

They will be bred again on Friday and Sunday.

Pearl is the beautiful pale yellow lab smiling in the sunshine, and Fire is the big, handsome dark yellow lab.

Send good thoughts Pearl's way!