Growing Up Guide Pup Now a Charity Organization

My wife and I are the creators of Growing Up Guide Pup. We have been hard at work trying to figure out how to come up with the means to bring the series back. After our first season we were able to find a fiscal sponsor so people who donated to us could get a tax deduction and we were hopeful that we would qualify for some of the various grants out there. We hired two different grant writers to help us find grants that we might qualify for and who had the knowledge to help us submit for them. Unfortunately we have been turned down for every grant that we have applied for.

We have come to find that were were not eligible for many of the grants because we were fiscally sponsored. After going back and forth over the last year or so we have decided to apply to become a non-profit. We have great news. Today we got our determination letter from the IRS. We are super excited to announce that we received an acceptance letter and our application has been approved! Growing Up Guide Pup is now officially a public charity 501(c)3 organization. We still have so much to do to get fully set up, but we are ready to make a fresh start and get back to work. We will be continuing to apply for grants, and we are in the process of planning a few fund raisers where anybody can donate to help our mission. The funds we raise will be going towards:

* new editing equipment, computer and software
* filming equipment, new lenses for our camera and recording media
* redoing our website and being able to hire someone to admin it,
* purchasing more royalty free music (unfortunately a lot of our previously bought royalty free music is no longer royalty free),
* designing and purchasing new graphics for the introduction and body of the show
* copy writing fees (unfortunately in this day and age this is a necessity)
* we are looking to hire someone to help with keeping our blog updated along with other social media duties,
* hiring another camera person for our next season to be able to get more footage of what goes into raising a puppy, including more home life with both Matt and I
* travel costs, we really want to show other raisers and service dog teams and sometimes that might require us to travel out of the area
* puppy care including veterinary costs, food, new toys and equipment.
* a puppy raising scholarship - we know first hand that raising a puppy costs money, Some people might have the time needed to raise a puppy but not the extra funds in their budget to make it happen. Depending on how much we raise we hope to be able to pay for the costs of raising a puppy for people who can't afford it.

As you can see we have lots of ideas how we can improve our show even more and hopefully draw more people in to watch and educate them not only what puppy raisers do but also how these puppies go on to change the lives of those who receive them. The more people know about service dogs the more they will be accepted in society. We have a few other changes in the works and hope to be able to announce those after the new year. If things go well a new puppy will arrive in the spring. From there we could have our next doggy for Growing Up Guide Pup. Thanks to all for the continued support and Happy Holidays!

The Little Ricki Song - Mckenna Faith Original Song

Mckenna Faith wrote this song honoring guide dog puppies for us a few years ago. We decided to release the unplugged recording we did with her that day. Big thanks to Mckenna and her family for making this awesome song for us.

Welcome Home Ricki!

We filmed the process of raising our guide dog puppy Ricki. After 16 months of making our series Growing Up Guide Pup, Ricki decided she wanted to be with us and was not guide dog material. Well the Nylabone company generously sent Ricki a "welcome home" package of dog toys. Our dogs have always loved Nylabones and they are our dog toy of choice. Thanks Nylabone!

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 64 - Finale

The long journey came to a conclusion this week. Ricki was our 10th dog we have raised for Guide Dogs. Although we have become conditioned for the process of raising pups for working careers, it never gets any easier. I know that the last episode of the season was dramatic, but I felt it was important to let the audience experience exactly what we experience every time we go through the process. I think the series should be liberating for puppy raisers, and used to help raise awareness across all working dog fields. I hope it helps open some eyes to those people out there who are not aware of the emotional ending. This episode is truly the only episode that has a beginning, middle, and end. Hence why I think it is probably the best one for someone to watch. We are so thankful and proud to have been the raisers of Ricki and wish her the best of luck in the future. Hopefully Guide Dogs will find a great alternative career for her in community placement.

Thanks to all for watching and your continual support. Be sure to check out our new website

http://www.growingupguidepup.com for the latest news on Ricki and our next pup coming in the future.

Matt

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 63 - Final Decision

You know when we first started this web series we had no expectations. Sure, I hoped Ricki would go on to become a guide dog. Not only would it be cool to raise awareness of the process, but damn; talk about a cool Hollywood ending. This episode really sums up the reality of the guide dog raising world however. Unpredictable twists and turns in the story always result. We wanted Ricki to graduate as a guide dog, but at the same time we wouldn't mind her becoming "career changed" so we might be able to keep her. There is always a lot of ups and downs and it can be crazy.

Now we are faced with a whole new challenge. Ricki has made it clear she wants to keep working. She paces up and down the living room as soon as a day or two go by without her working, or training. If she didn't show this tendency perhaps we would think about keeping her. But we want to give Ricki every chance at doing a job because we feel this will give her a much more fulfilling life based on her personality. She is prepped for something other than guide dog work so lets see what happens.

The future is uncertain as I write this blog. The one thing we hope people have learned from the series is that becoming a guide dog is hard. We strived to raise awareness about this, and hope people have a larger appreciation for the "puppy raisers" involvement in the process too. At the end of the day, if we met these goals, then Ricki has done her job as far as this guy is concerned.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 62 - Ricki Point of View

Ricki continues to make baby steps in the right direction. I'm very proud of Ricki and Amie. The progress they have made is very significant. However, it might prove to fall short of what Guide Dogs requires. Ricki has a strong instinctive reaction to squirrels. Who can blame her? She is doing what most dogs would probably do in the same situation. We don't want to force the issue forever. It is up to Ricki to decide her fate. if she ultimately decides she doesn't want to do what it takes to be a guide dog, then that is what fate has decided. We hope that our fans will understand that either way Ricki has done a great job, and should be celebrated for her fantastic contributions to the guide dog community. She has helped bring all of us together, and for that we will always be forever grateful.

Stay tuned to see what happens!

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 61 - Aqua Dogs

This week Ricki has made huge progress. She is able to walk alongside a group of pigeons without going crazy. She can handle looking at one or two at the same time with no problem especially. This is a dramatic change from how she reacted when she saw pigeons for the first time in Week 29. Seth and Bamboo demonstrated how it's done, while Ricki was totally crazy.

Ricki has also made big improvements with her squirrel distractions as well. She is able to walk by the toy squirrel without pulling on the leash and trying to chase it. However, if you squeek the toy or throw it in front of her, this is a different story. This is an area we are going to continue to work on by not jumping ahead of ourselves. We probably went a little too aggressive this week.

The last thing we wanted to show is that a working dog needs to have fun too. We took Ricki swimming with her mom Tulin again. I had fun playing with my new GOProHD Hero camera that can shoot underwater. The footage is totally cool. Check it out!

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 60 - Toy Squirrel

This squirrel distraction thing is so much work. We have been training Ricki everyday with it. She has made huge progress in the past week, and we hope it makes a difference. We will be getting another evaluation from our community field representative soon. We don't know if Ricki will have made enough progress, but we won't have her fail for lack of trying. It's frustrating because Ricki has so many other things going good for her, and yet her distraction issues could end it all. She has had the best relieving habits of any dog we have ever had. She is incredibly patient and rarely gets uneasy or bored. She strives to please and really enjoys working. These things mentioned are equally hard to get a dog to perform well at. Eli could care less about the birds and squirrels when he was training. He ignored them like a champ, and yet he couldn't handle the simple things like actually doing what he was told. Anyways, I'm just venting off the top of my head. Stay tuned and we will see where this adventure takes us next.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 59 - Pigeon Progress

Amie and Ricki have been working everyday on her bird distraction issues. Pigeons are the worse of Ricki's bird distractions so this is where most of the focus has been lately. Ricki has been making big improvements because we have taken a few steps back and started rewarding her for the small things. One of the most effective training tips we got is requiring Ricki to Watch Amie, and ignore the pigeons by constantly redirecting Ricki's focus. Amie walks Ricki away from the distraction and rewards her with a treat. It seems to be making a difference, and I look forward to seeing how our community field rep judges Ricki's progress in a few weeks.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 58 - Ricki Evaluation

We have reached a crucial point in Ricki's training. Her future as a guide dog is in question. Amie met with our community field representative where a myriad of issues were discussed. I wanted to film the meeting, but they decided it would be best if we didn't. We were told we have a few more weeks to get Ricki past her distraction issues. Amie has a few new techniques to incorporate with her food reward protocal, and we are rewarding for smaller things now. We are also taking Ricki out for training everyday at this crucial point in her development. Stay tuned!

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 57 - Dog Distractions

Amie said a great thing to Seth and I months back that I really love. She said that guide dogs are the "navy seals" of the working dog industry. The more we shoot the show, the more it makes sense to me. I mean everywhere you take these dogs poses a myriad of distractions. Whether it be other dogs, food, cats, small animals, birds, kids, balls, sounds, water, etc. It is amazing that any of them graduate. To turn off a dogs natural instinct which is to be curious about things around him/her is a huge challenge. We strive to do this with Ricki constantly, and it is amazing how the same training can be utilized in so many different locations. Ricki continues to make baby steps as we crawl closer to her recall date. We have high hopes that she will do well, but ultimately this will be up to her. We know she has the work drive as well as the drive to please. Only time will tell if that will be enough.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 55 - Farm Animals

This week was cool because we were able to review all of Ricki's main issues. Her small animal distractions, bird distractions, ball distractions, and dog distractions. We are constantly exposing Ricki to the things that could cause her to fail puppy college. It is the only thing we can do before her formal training. Will it be enough for her to graduate? Only time will tell and everyone will have to continue to tune it and find out.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 54 - Nylabone

This week marks an important step for us. It's the first time a company has worked with us in any form. Nylabone donated toys for our puppy raising group, as well as donated a bunch of items for a youtube contest. This might not seem like that big of a deal, but for us it is. We feel like the only way we will be able to sustain what we are doing in a long term vision, is to find a way to help make a living with the series. Making a living might mean picking up a sponsor who can burden the bills of creation. We have taken on the burden so far on our own, and will continue as long as possible. But this was a really cool step in the right direction for us.

Nylabone will always rock in our book, and we have nothing but great things to say about them.

If you are interested in winning our giveaway package. Thumb up, comment, and favorite this episode on youtube. Make sure you subscribe if you have not already.

Chappy

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 53 - Vet Conference

Well here i am talking about our second video we shot while in Vegas. The whole reason for our being in Vegas in the first place was so Amie could attend the WVC conference. We just have learned to adapt our lives to making a series and taking opportunities to train Ricki when then pop up. This episode was probably one of my least favorites that I have made in awhile. 100 percent of the footage was shot with a flip cam, and most of the footage was indoors providing a pretty unprofessional result. The camera does everything automatically including exposure control and it's low light capabilities are ok at best.

Despite my own reservations this episode seems to be received well. It just goes to show that story takes precedence over everything else. Amie and I have learned a lot about our audience from this episode, and the value of showing other working teams holds high. Marlis and Gable were a pleasure to have breakfast with, and provided some great insight to their world. A big thanks to them, and to all our fans for your continual support.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 50 - One Year Anniversary

Well it's official. Our first year of the series has been completed. We did it. It's been a big challenge banging out a episode every week, but very fun. Although there are 52 weeks in a year, we have 50 episodes. But I guess if you count the two birthday special episodes we are right on track.

Our series has premiered at the New Media Festival, and was recently accepted into the LAWEBFEST. We did our first radio interview for Working Like Dogs on Petliferadio, and recently were told Nylabone is going to sponsor us, and give us a bunch of products for free. We are going to do a Youtube contest with some of the products, and also give a bunch of toys to our fellow puppy raisers in our group. So it seems we are doing pretty good, and the future looks good.

Ricki is well on her way to becoming a guide dog. She is our tenth dog, and one of the best prospects we have had so far. We think she has a really good chance of making it so stay tuned to see how it all goes.

Thanks for watching, subscribing on youtube, becoming a fan on facebook, telling your friends and family about our series, and your continual support.

Matt

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 49 - Giants Fan Fest

Amie and I are big Giants fans. Since they won the world series, it only made sense to attend fan fest for this weeks episode. We decided to take the train to the park so we could add some training for Ricki into the mix. She has been on the train a few times, but never with this many people. The ride there was really packed, and almost completely full with fellow Giants fans. Ricki did a great job this week on the train, and she did an even better job at the ball park. We were very impressed with her ability to stay calm despite her being surrounded by wall to wall people. The attendance was crazy. The doors for general admission opened at 11:00am, and by 11:10am they were already telling people on KNBR to stay home because it filled up so quickly. I heard that more than 50,000 people attended which is funny because the park doesn't even sit that many people. Another job well done by Ricki and I can't wait to see where are adventures take us next.

Growing Up guide Pup - Week 48 - Seth and Bamboo

This week was very difficult for us. We battled back and forth on what we should do. Would talking about this publicly be a good idea? We contacted Seth's parents as well as got advice from my family about if doing a video tribute for Seth would be a tasteful thing to do. We got overwhelming support that we should move forward with the idea. We thought it would be appropriate to do a hike at Mt Tam. Seth had expressed on a few occasions, and even left a comment on our youtube page about how awesome it would be. We really enjoyed celebrating his life in our own special way and it really helped us feel better doing the walk.

We were shocked when we found out Seth had passed away last week. Seth was so supportive of what we were doing and really helped validate our series. His opinion meant a lot to us, and he always chimed in. He participated on all of our videos on youtube leaving funny, and quirky comments. He also was a regular participant on our facebook fan page. He was known to help with great info, and even answered questions from time to time. We had big plans for the future, and his continual involvement in the show was something we had discussed a lot. We were deeply affected by his untimely passing, and will forever be inspired to continue raising awareness about guide dogs in his honor.

Seth was a super star in our guide dog world. It will be difficult without him, but we must push on. We know this is what he would have wanted for us.

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 47 - Puppy Handling

Amie and I enjoy the challenge of making new episodes with content that is refreshing and new. Although this week lacked the sizzle of a spectacular outing, it has performed good compared to most of our first week numbers. We will certainly keep this lesson in mind for the future. There is plenty of stuff we can do in the house that focuses on our training with Ricki at home.

I am also excited that we were able to unveil a little clue of the entire other world Amie is involved with as a vet tech. That's right, not only is she a puppy raiser, she is also a licensed vet technician at a ER for pets south of San Francisco.

Thanks to everyone for their support.
Matt

Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 46 - Museum

Amie and I have really gotten into a groove with the series. It has become second nature to bang out a episode every week. I don't worry about pulling it off anymore. When we first started I used to wonder if we really would be able to do this for a year and a half. That is no longer a concern. Now it is more of a question of what are we not going to be able to get around to showing before Ricki goes back? What should we save for a second season? Haha

Ricki is showing constant improvements every week. However, she constantly needs to be reminded of the rules in place and is not the fastest learner. We think that it will all sink in with time. She has the most important personality trait. She wants to please us and that is awesome.

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Growing Up Guide Pup - Week 45 - Fundraiser

We own a ton of thanks to Guide Dogs For the Blind this week. They generously sponsored us to attend the fundraiser so we could make this episode. This really means a lot to us and we consider it a sort of right of passage for our series. Otherwise we could not afford to attend. We really enjoy raising awareness about this organization and hope to expand our series continually beyond the scope of puppy raising. After all, what we do is only part of the equation. I think this episode brings us all closer together and executes continual awesomeness for the future.

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