She was enormous by the time she came to HAWS -- ready to give birth any day. Champagne ended up having 15 puppies in her foster home, an extremely large number of puppies for any dog to have to take care of! You can read about Champagne and her puppies on her blog. A few weeks ago HAWS behavior manager Claudeen McAuliffe, Ph.D. mentioned that she really needed help with socializing the puppies to kids, and since I work with a ton of kids she was hoping I could help. And so we decided to host a night where kids could come to HAWS and socialize the puppies, socialize with each other, and have fun.
Our first "Puppy Movie Night" was last Friday evening. Forty-nine kids between the ages of 6 and 14 years of age came to play with puppies, eat pizza, watch a movie while munching on popcorn, and play with puppies again. By the end of it the puppies were tired, and the kids told me what a wonderful evening they had. As a matter of fact, many became very excited when I mentioned that we may have a "Kitten Movie Night" in the future.