Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A trip out to SouthWest

So last week I went out to the SouthWest, aka, Los Angeles for a short mini-vacation! It was incredible and I had a great time! We decided to stop in to the SouthWest Regional campus of CCI and check out the facility. They are also in the middle of Team Training now and so we weren't sure whether we were going to be able to see the campus or not. The campus normally gives tours to the public on the first Thursday of every month and we were hoping to make it to the campus on time!

Instead we arrived about a half hour after the tour began and it turned out that no one showed up for the tour so the woman left! We were very disappointed, but I had been communicating back and forth with SWR's PPM and Stu said that he would be happy to give us a quick tour! I was so excited and very thankful to him for taking an hour out of his extremely busy day to show us around the campus. He really is a great guy and I can see how he makes a great PPM.

So here are some pictures that I took!The front of the campus

My mother and I in front of the sign for the SouthWest!

An area dedicated to PRs and Graduates. The bricks all have names and such on them.

This is what the sign reads. I love it!!

One of the resident cats. I don't think it liked being disturbed!

This is on the outside of the campus wall. I saw this first thing as we came up to the campus which alerted me to the campus! What a great sign!

The campus really is beautiful and is so open and airy! It's so different from NER since they have such a constant in temperature and can do a lot of work outside on the grounds. It's a lot of stuff packed into a small (2+ acres I believe) area, but it really works well for them. Stu was saying that they would like to expand, but there is no more room! They are boxed in by the roads on three sides, and a therapeutic riding school on the fourth side. But, like I said, it is so nicely spaced out that they are well situated.

Gorgeous campus!!!

Also, while at Downtown Disneyland we spotted a puppy-in-training from Guide Dogs of America! Having this blog has helped me to see a lot of the other organizations and recognize their capes and vests. So I saw this dog and immediately recognized it from a distance! Was anyone at Downtown Disneyland on Saturday Nov. 7th from GDA?? The pup was a yellow lab/golden cross from what I could see and very well behaved! The woman was too far ahead of me to catch up to her and have a quick chat.

Then a little while later I saw ANOTHER dog walking around! I'm not sure where this dog was from, but again looked like a yellow lab/golden cross with a blue cape on, but not CCI. I didn't recognize anything about the vest, but that doesn't mean anything! I tried to get a picture and this is what I ended up with!
As you can see, I barely got the dog's behind! Anyways, it was a fun trip and I wished I had Nuri with me since there were so many experiences that she would have loved to experience!

2 comments:

  1. What a beautiful campus! I love seeing photos of that campus, it's so gorgeous! And how fun to see service dogs in training at Disneyland. The last one may be with Canine Angels Service Teams that place dogs with young people (ages 5-25 generally) and have blue jackets. canine-angels.org :-D Sounds like an awesome trip!

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  2. I was just looking at your sidebar. KSDS used to stand for Kansas Specialty Dog Service but now it's just KSDS, no meaning behind it at this point :-D

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