Valencia's Birthday

My baby dog turned 3 on Thursday, and I'd say she had a pretty good day.

She got her birthday present early on Wednesday from my mom, a stuffed bunny that has no stuffing. They're called "skinnies" or something like that. She loved it, I think mostly the fact that it has squeakers at both ends, haha

Thursday is one of the days I spend on campus from 8 am to 8 pm, but I think it was the most fun for her that I could have made it. She got lots of "happy birthday"s from the other girls, and I brought her bone with me to campus. I may start doing this regularly on long days. I feel bad because Tues/Thurs I'm inside basically all day except for when I take her out to go potty. Valencia doesn't need to be in harness that whole time. I've started letting her have a couple hours off while I'm frantically working on things in the student work rooms.

...Anyway...

Session Thursday was designed to be a birhtday party for her. On the first day of clinic I had my client read a story about planning a surprise party and mentioned that Vaelncia's birthday was coming soon. In the following sessions he asked if we were going to have a party, so we did.

Emily, my coclinician got some extra balloons from one of the other girls that we decorated our room with. We acquired even more decorations when my client and his mom arrived. They brought a whole bag of dog birthday supplies, including a happy birthday banner, pictures of dogs, dog books, and a ziplock of doggy treats.

Everything we did in session revolved around a story I had written about Valencia having a birthday party. At the end I had candy for us, and let my client give Valencia one of the dog treats. It was a really fun session.

Valencia's day was rounded off with receiving a milkbone from the resource room attendant Kim and playing with Brady at home.

I think the only thing that could have made it better for either of us would have been for Valencia and Tad to get to spend their birthday together.