Cindy Knowlton has been an NCTD member for five years along with her six year old Belgian Tervuren named Spree. After watching an encounter that Spree shared with a mentally and physically challenged stranger when Spree was just a 16 week old pup, Cindy knew that therapy work would be in Spree's future, so she did her homework and chose NCTD. Cindy and Spree have enjoyed participating in the READ program at Faith Baptist Christian School in Laurel, MD for the past five years, and are looking forward to starting back again this fall. More recently they have also been visiting at Copper Ridge in Sykesville, MD. When Spree isn't wearing her vest, she enjoys agility most of all. Her favorite obstacle is the tunnel, which is obvious in the photo below. You can see Spree's latest agility videos at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_ywLQyAmhU
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbgJntK7rd0
Last June, Cindy added two more therapy dogs to the group: Groovy, a four year old Belgian Tervuren, and Yogi, a two year old German Shepherd. While they're both still finding their therapy dog paths, both have participated in the READ program at FBCS, and Yogi has also visited at Copper Ridge. When Groovy isn't visiting, he enjoys nose work training, with hopes of competing when the nose work program finally moves to the east coast. You can see video of Groovy training for nose work here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lz3sNMJEkA
Yogi can often be found hiking the Appalachian Trail with Cindy's husband, Alan. More recently, he's discovered a new passion in dock diving.
You can see video of Yogi dock diving here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHobhgwGRtk
Spree, Groovy and Yogi share their home with three other dogs. Quasar and Cash are 12 and 11 year old Belgian Tervuren, and Grizzlee is a 9 year old German Shepherd. Together they keep their humans, who love them deeply, very busy.
When Cindy's not wearing an NCTD uniform, you'll most likely find her working with her dogs or playing with her camera, either privately or professionally.
This is a joy to read...and seeing all the wonderful ways dogs can have fun and enrich our lives too. The diversity of what you do is awesome. Maybe one day you will come and speak at an open floor. Rigel our oldest did some preliminary nose work with Ruth Chase at Coventry school when we were working out some of the bugs on how she would run class. I need to post some of his initial tries with nose work.
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