PetExpo - 2011

Today my family took Jess and I out. We were up early and went for a walk on the beach at St Heliers, I am not a great fan of the beach, too much sand, but my family make me walk on it as it cleans up my paws a real treat! Jess loves the beach, she just trots along looking around at all the sights and sounds of the beach. Last time we were at the beach in St Heliers we met another hound but she was not there today.

Anyway after breakfast and a short rest, we were off in the car again, this time we went to the Pet Expo over at the North Shore Events Centre. The place was packed, and just like the great Led Zepplin album, we went in through the out door. Once in side we were both assaulted by the sights, sounds and smells of the expo. There were pets of all sizes and their owners everyhwere!

We did a three hour stint on the GAP stand. We hussled hard to encourage others to adopt our brothers and sisters in the kennels. It was stimulation overload. Jess was not so keen on all the attention and kept hiding, but after a while she decided to give it a go and cheered up. I, however was in my element, seeking out every face to lick and every hand to be patted, stroked and scratched with. After a while though, even I had to have a lie down. But I made sure I had a nice lap to lie on when I did!

You can see some images of us that attended today below. There were some new hounds that we had not met before and others who we had. Some of the names that I remember from today were: Lily, Eddie, Kylie, Bella, Gizmo.

Stan and Jess run together

This weekend marks the official residence for Jess. My family invited the Auckland dog ranger round to assess whether our section is good enough for us, we passed and now Jess has an Auckland City dog tag and the ranger took away her Manawatu licence.

The weekend got even better when my family got us up early today and took us out for our usual morning walk. But this time, for the first time in ages, they brought along our muzzles. Jess and I have never run together before, in fact my family have never let Jess off the lead when we are out. But today was different, today we went to the Crossfield Reserve and there was no one on it and we ran! It was misty and empty. I was allowed to run first, it was great to be let off the leash and run free again. Then the family let Jess go, she was not really sure what to do and bounded off like a bunny rabbit! She did put on a little burst of speed, but I am sure if we had been running together, I would have won!

This afternoon we went out again, this time to Churchill Park and again with muzzles. Our family took us to a section of the park where we could again be off lead. This time however, we had to do recall, which we did really well and the family also took some images of us running too. Finally Jess and I ran together and I still beat her!

You can check out the images of us running at Churchill Park below. It was such great fun, we hope to go back there again regularly. Several other dog walkers stopped us as we were returning to the car as they love us Greyhounds and were bitterly disappointed that they did not see us running. Next time, we told them!

Stan and Jess TV

I have ironed out the wrinkles and the Hound Cam will be live from 7:30 AM NZDT Tuesday 16 May. It is running now just to test the power settings on the host computer. So what do Hounds get up to when they are left alone. I think that a parlour game will be counting how many of those sofas, will be slept on whilst we are not in the house.... The channel for Stan and Jess is here and the link to the embedded player in an earlier post is here.

GAP - Nosh Metro

It was not a GAP run yesterday, but a meeting outside Nosh Metro on Ponsonby Road. Jess and I were taken there by the family and we all stood around looking great and spreading the word to encourage people to stop and then think about adopting more of our friends. The stopping strategy was easy, we occupied a corner, outside one of the entrances to Nosh. The then occupied both sides of the footpath. The only escape was either to duck into the Nosh store, which would have made the manager happy, walk into the busy Ponsonby Road, not very safe or run the gauntlet of us and be forced to love us!

So what happened? Well people and other dogs ran our gauntlet! Only one owner of a small white fluffy thing, sort of a feather duster with legs, elected to pick up his furball and walk through us. The rest were all happy to stop, pet us and be informed about us. Lots of people were happy to make cash donations to the cause. To all of you who donated, thanks a lot.

As usual it was great to reacquaint myself and to introduce Jess to some of my old mates. Here is the roll call of who was there before we left: Riley, Mouse, Puni, Nicky, Jenny, Molly and Otis.

Below are some images of us.

Stan and Jess - broadcasting live

Stan and Jess have their own TV channel on http://ustream.tv We want to see what our hounds get up to when we are not home. Do they play, do they sleep together, apart etc. So you too can check in to see what the hounds do by watching their channel either here or on their site: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/stan-cam1


Streaming live video by Ustream

Easter Show

My family took me and my new compadre, Jess to the Royal Easter Show at the Auckland Showgrounds this weekend. We were bundled into the car and off we went, I love traveling in the car and stood all the way with my nose out of the window. Jess just lay there. Once inside the grounds we easily found all of our old mates and met many more new ones at the GAP tent. Jess had met some of them too from the last GAP meet at Four Seasons in Glen Innes a couple of weeks ago. It was really busy and we were ideally positioned between the rabbits and alpacas to really want to get off the stand and go find the source of the smells! Apart from that distraction we were on a corner site and had loads of traffic come past us. We were all over loved, patted, stroked and kissed by thousands of people.

As a result of us hanging around as we did, we were able to hand out loads of brochures and many of the visitors are now really interested in adopting some of our fellow hounds. I hope they do.

The images below are from the show. Forgot to write down the names of the hounds but you will all know who you are!

GAP - Advert

I have just spent a good deal of the day at the Royal Easter Show in Auckand promoting the GAP cause. I was accompanied by the new arrival in the family, Jess. We and the other hounds got huge amounts of attention, but more of that later. I did overhear that an advert has been produced on our behalf. So as soon as I got home I looked it up on the GAP website and have posted it here: Please pass it on!