the dirty dozen

So remember when I wrote, only half-apologetically, a few posts back that I was becoming one of those intolerable grannies with the fold-out pictures of my family, prattling on about my dog Stella and cat Maude?

Well that was due in part to the enormous energy I was pouring into getting my dog Canine Good Citizen-certified.

The test was today. Seventeen dogs, pit bulls every one, gathered in a parking lot before the fog lifted off the Bay and waited our turn with an AKC official, who ran us all through a gamut of ten tests, what I can best equate to a set of back-to-back merit badge assessments. Here's the lowdown.