Saturday 16th September. We're home! Karen, Caesar and I arrived home safely this morning ... more once we are a little less jet lagged.

Friday 15th September. The last day of our trip. We're due to leave our hotel shortly after lunch and head for Detroit Airport. We'll catch the 6.20pm British Airways flight to London, Heathrow, which is due to arrive arrive 7am (local) Saturday morning.

Time to reflect uopn our time here in Michigan, where we saw a few things for the first time...

The Michigan Left ... which is required of drivers should they wish to turn left, is actually two left turns aqnd a right, involving the driver overshooting the junction and turning back. Karen and Wendy couldn't really get used to this, which led to some fun as at times they were both caled to be navigators!

Skunk ... the smell of this critter lingers and is unforgettable.

Chipmunks ... running around the grounds of the MSU campus in East Lansing, they were a surprise and certainly caught Caesars' attention.

Bulletproof KFC ... witnessed in downtown Detroit, need I say more?

Bus Bike Racks ... wow what a great idea! We were surprised to see local buses in Troy with a rack on the front to carry bikes. We tried to get a picture, but naturally enough, the bus moved off!

Thursday 14th September. We were up promptly this morning and got ready to take Caesar to see the vet. He needed his passport preparations completed prior to our return to the UK on Saturday morning. Pleasingly, the vet said he had the heart of an athlete, very clean teeth and perfect weight. In fact, if the scales were correct, he may well have lost about a pound while we have been away.

Later in the day we were picked up by Cindy and went to the gun club with her and her family. Karen was anxious to try her hand at shooting, and amongst the gunfire, Caesar was anxious to leave! Firstly, they had a go at archery, Karen shot a recurve bow, similar to the sort of bow that I used to shoot. Then over to the skeet range.

Karen had some instructions and then was able to try her hand at rifle shooting, it wasn't long at all before she was hitting the clay pigeons ... yay, you go girl!


Caesar and I watched from the car as it was more comfortable for his ears there. I decided not to shoot as I really don't think my arm is up to it yet, post surgery.







Afterwards we enjoyed a drink at the gun club before going off to a grill for supper.

Thanks for a super evening Mark, Cindy & Family.

Wednesday 13th September. A bit of a lazy day today, we started to organise some packing, went shopping and geocaching. It was rainy and thundering most of the day :o(

The geocache we completed was a nano cache not far from our hotel, a nano cache is a tiny geocache which has no room to put trading items and barely room to write your name on the log book. They are usually in urban environments and can be quite challenging but fun!

To give you some idea, the nano cache we found today was a lot smaller than my geocoins, which are approx 1" in diameter.


Wendy holding the nano cache

We were delighted to be able to meet the cache owner (Firefly03) and to swap some geocaching stories, coins and travel bugs. Hopefully, when we return next year, the local geocachers will have a cache bash for us and we'll meet lots more Michigan geocachers.

In the evening we returned to the bar/grill close by the hotel to enjoy a meal while watching Detroit play baseball (on tv).

Tuesday 12th November. The remianing board members left Detroit today, but not before we had some fun. Tanya, Carol, Karen & I went to the Motown Museum in downtown Detroit. But first we had to go and exchange the large Chevrolet Suburban that Carol had hired to transport the whole board around while we were here. The Suburban was an amazing vehicle which required more than a little climbing to get into!
Caesar was dwarfed by the Chevvy!


Girls just wanna have fun! Tanya, Karen & Carol with assistance dogs Brooke and Caesar, outside our hotel in Troy, Michigan.

Carol went into the rental office to exchange the Chevvy for something smaller, and came out with ....

....A HUMMER! WOW!


Karen in the Hummer. Ripe banana!

We all enjoyed the Motown Museum. I was delighted to find it was fully wheelchair accessible, and we were all welcomed with our assistance dogs. It was incredible to think that we were in the very building that launched the careers of so many famous artistes.


Karen (left) and Carol (right) were game enough to sing a song "Stop! In the name of love" in the famous Motown Studio A. Well done for being such good sports, girls!


Wendy, Karen & Caesar in Studio A


Carol with her assistance dog Heart, Wendy, Karen & Caesar, outside Berry Gordy's house on West Grand Boulevard, Detroit, where the sound of Motown was conceived and born.


Karen & Caesar

After we visited the museum we went down the street to KFC for lunch. It was a strange set up, security very much in evidence and even the staff behind the screen had to press a button to open the toilets for customers to gain access! When we got back to the car, Tanya said dryly, "Well, Wendy & Karen, what did you think of your first bullet proof dining experience"? We all laughed, but it really wasn't a pleasant place to be.

We heard today, that two geocachers that Wendy met in London last September, and had hoped to meet while here, but didn;t have enough time, had taken a trip to the geocache at Michigan State University to collect one of the travel bugs we left there yesterday. Thanks Ken & Leah! Next time, we'll definitely give you more notice and hopefully we can hook up for a geocaching bash.

Monday 11th September. We spent the weekend attending the Board Meeting of IAADP up in Sterling Heights. Long tiring days, but good company and good food, and we got lots of business covered.

Today, we set off with four other IAADP board members to attend a talk given by Ed & Toni Eames at Michigan State University Vet School in East Lansing.

We had lunch at Wendy's Hamburger Store, and one of the staff very kindly gave me his baseball cap. Off to the university next, the size of the campus, as compared to British universities was ENORMOUS! Ed, Toni & Tanya went straight into the vet school, while Karen, Carol and I went geocaching. We found a cache in the 4-H childrens garden right on the campus. Great, an oportunity to leave a couple of travel bugs and see if they can make thier way home.

During the talk at the vet schoool, Ed & Toni invited Tanya, Carol & I to speak, which we happily did. Caesar and I did a small demo, he showed off how he can retrieve some items and take my socks off. The students asked us quite a few questions and seemed to appreciate meeting so many different assistance dogs.

Afterwards we went in persuit of an MSU sweatshirt that I had set my sights upon, and thankfully found a store that sold them :o) The long drive back to Troy was uneventful and we ended the day at Big Boy, enjoying their chocolate fudge and ice cream desserts!


They sure know how to fill your plate here!


Enjoying a drink at MY hamburger store, and Yay, we found the geocache!



Toni & Ed Eames with Guide Dogs Keebler & Latrell, during their talk at Michigan State University Vet School.

Friday 8th September. Time is flying by and today was the first day of the three day IAADP board meeting. A long but hopefully productive day. We had a super dinner in the evening at the local hunt club.

Today and tomorrow are red letter days for Dogs for the Disabled the programme Caesar comes from. The new Training and Education Building is being opened and there are celebrations for the 18th birthday of the charity. Happy Birthday DFD!

Wet dogs contemplating a breakout!

Thursday 7th September. More time to get our bearings and discover the local shopping area before fellow board members arrived. We boted up the laptop and discovered that the nearest geocache was 0.14 miles from the hotel, so out we went and nabbed it. A simple find and Karen and I were delighted to get one under our belt in Michigan after being let down badly by a fellow cacher in Pennsylvania at the weekend.

We had lunch at a Big Boy restaurant, and boy, the meals were BIG!

The rest of the board arrived during the day and the dogs all had a super time charging around, wrestling, chasing and enjoying one anothers company.

We both still have colds, but not as bad as they were earlier in the week.

Wednesday 6th September. Up early, all packed and ready to leave the hotel by 8.00am. Our lift arrived for us on time and after a short ride we were at La Guardia Airport. We went to the US Airways desk only to learn our flight from New York to Detroit via Philadephia had been cancelled. Hmm, we had chosen that option because it was half the price of a direct flight with Northwest Airlines, but if it didn't run it wasn;tgoing to be the cheaper option at all we thought. However, the solution put to us by US Airways was that they bump us onto a Northwest Direst Flight, which would be leaving an hour earlier. So after a couple of minutes we were back in our shuttle being taken to the next terminal to board the flight we originally wanted but didn;t want to pay for. US Airways picked up the tab and in no time we were on our way direct to Detroit. Result! We'd made a couple of calls to see if our arranged lift could collect us earlier but didn't know whether that would work out or not, sure enough, it did, and we made the transition to our suite in a hotel in Troy, Michigan seemlessly. It's great when travel plans work so well!

We met up with Tanya a fellow board member on our arrival and in no time were settled into our suite, and took a nap before dinner. It was great catching up with Tanya again, and of course Caesar was delighted to rekindle his friendship with Brooke, (Tanyas gorgeous black Labrador) originally cemented in San Diego last January.

Tuesday 5th September. Lazy day at the hotel, only venturing out to walk Caesar. We repacked all our gear ready for our flight to Detroit via Philadelphia in the morning.

Oh, check out our etry for 27th August again ... today, we added a movie blip that we took at Niagara Falls.

Just gotta share this photo with you all though.

Monday 4th September. We made our way safely bacxk to The Doubletree Hotel at JFK courtesy of Maggie & Lousie. Thanks girls, great road trip. We're exhausted and now both Karen and Wendy are nursing colds. As soon as we got to our room and sorted out we had an early night to try and shake off the lurgy!

Sunday 3rd September. Yuck, Wendy awoke with a sore throat and streaming cold. We were all tired out. We got to Goldstock early for Sirius to take part in the Olympics. It was raining, the Olympics were indoors. It was fun watching the Olympics and seeing all the dogs having fun. After that Wendy had to take a nap, thanks Carolyn for the kind loan of your bed. In the afternoon, we headed back to the motel for a much needed rest.

Caesar at the lake.

One of the sassiest walk contestants.

Saturday 2cnd September. We were up bright and early and made our way to Goldstock (via McDonalds drive thru for breakfast)! We found our way to the Canine Good Citizen testing, which was indoors rather than out because of drizzly rain, and checked Caesar in for testing. In a few minutes we were up, our turn. Having done absolutely no preparation, and having spent the past fortnight or so in hotels and on the move, I wondereed if Caesar would be up to it. I should never have doubted my beautiful Golden boy, he surpassed himself and the examiner said it was a pleasure to meet and test Caesar. Go Caesar! Next stop was the TDI testing. Again indoors but in a different building, This was all new stuff to Caesar in regard to being tested for it, but in actual fact, nothing in the test was new to him with regard to previous experiences and the work he does. Again, he passed with flying colours. The examiner was delighted to have tested Caesar as his first British dog, even though he has performed somewhere near a thousand tests before. The compliments for Caesar, his disposition and behaviour were flowing and I was very proud to be his Mom today.

After lunch, which we enjoyed with many of our Land of Pure Gold friends, we went to one of the cabins to share some time together and many of us exchanged gifts and the dogs were all together, al free and having a great time. They wriggled past eachother al vying to get attention, to see what gifts were for them, to get the nearest tennis ball, and not a cross word between them. Wonderful.

A bundle of pure gold. Who's who? Caesar is closest to the camera!

Later in the afternoon we made our way down to the lakeside and the dogs enjoyed a swim. Unfortunately one dog got into difficulty in the lake (by mistaking a bouy for a ball, grabbing it and refusing to let go), so Karen and Rhonda had to effect a rescue. Well done girls!

Later in the day we had dinner, watched the auctions and did some all important shopping at the Golden Retriever Rescue Booths.

A long, tiring but great day.

Friday 1st September. After a good nights sleep, we got up and packed some of our gear to take with us to Goldstock and the rest to stay at the hotel. Mid-afternoon Maggie, Louise and Maggies gorgeous Golden Retriever Sirius arrived to take us to Goldstock with them. In no time the gear was on the roofrack and we were on our way. We finally made it to Hancock, New York around 9pm and went to the Goldstock camp to see if we could meet up with any of our other Land of Pure Gold Friends. Seems most were either still on the way or in bed, so we only met Kathy and her Golden service dog, Noah.

We went to the hotel (via the takeaway) and got some sleep.

Wendy & Caesar outside the motel.