
Events – Current & Pupcoming
The 2026 CALENDARS are here!
The wall calendar – A beautifully curated calendar, where each month unfolds with a delightful collection of heartwarming dog portraits, capturing the joy and charm of man’s best friend in every season. The desk calendar – One great photo each month sits on your desk giving an easy overview of the month.
Buy in bundles and save! Add 2+ calendars to your cart to see a discount.
ENDS TUESDAY! MAESSR’s First Annual VIRTUAL Springer Sprint 2025: Wednesday, 10/1 – Tuesday, 10/7. Never done a virtual walk/run? It’s easy and fun! Simply sign up, and then walk or run 5k during National Walk Your Dog Week. Do it all at once or over the course of the week, and log your progress on the website. Do it by yourself, with a friend, or with your dog. Get a tee shirt and a bandana for your furry friend when you’re done! Check out LINK or send EMAIL for information
Featured Dogs

Check out our senior/special needs dogs! Our program, SENIORS FOR SENIORS, charges a $75 adoption fee for adopters aged 60 and over who adopt dogs nine years old and older or special needs dogs. If interested in one of our senior/special needs dogs, contact Candi Lynn here.
Fund$ for Foster$
Feed your pets NATURAL BALANCE? Please save the store receipt & proof of purchase labels, staple them together, & mail to MAESSR at P.O. Box 807 – Goochland, VA 23063. Once we collect 50 labels, we can apply for a refund.
DOGWISE is another MAESSR affiliate whose mission is to bring humane, understandable & scientifically sound information to people who enrich their lives by working with, playing with & loving dogs. Many of the books, including the booklets, in the MAESSR library can be found at Dogwise.com. You can support MAESSR & get great training advice by shopping. They also sell some training products. Look for the $5 books on sale while you are there!
The Marketplace
The MAESSR MARKETPLACE is open 24/7 for purchases. We’ve also got cool toys for man’s best friend and companion. The MAESSR store and website are in transition – thanks so much for your understanding while we make improvements to the store and website.
Training Library
The MAESSR Training Library has over 300 titles of ACTUAL DVDs, CDs, and books, both fiction and non-fiction, to lend out. You can BORROW items directly from the Training Library by simply adding them to the shopping cart and checking out. The material will be mailed to you and is due back in three weeks; YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR RETURN POSTAGE.
Library Wish Lists
Featured Library Titles
NEW TO THE LIBRARY! 101 WAYS TO DO MORE WITH YOUR DOG! (208 pages) by Kyra Sundance. Play, jump, drive, pull, help, or just soak up the limelight—101 Ways to Do More with Your Dog builds confidence and jump starts the bonding process between dog and owner. You will never have a bored, rainy day again! See happy dogs and their owners participating in a wide range of activities together, and bringing joy to others, and you, too, will be inspired to find new things to do with your beloved dog. You may have heard of agility, search & rescue, or thought, “My dog should be on TV!” With our busy schedules and demands on our time, we can’t always convert our dreams into reality. With 101 Ways to Do More with Your Dog, you have 101 easy ways to get inspired. For each activity, you’ll learn the best type of dog, how to get started, and where to find governing organizations. Then, you go one step further: enjoy the visual, step-by-step instruction on how to teach your dog the basics. That way, you can try the sport out on your own at home, without the commitment of signing up for a class. And if you DO decide that this is an activity that you’d like to pursue, you can go into a class with confidence! Activities for you and your dog include: Volleyball – Jump Rope – Scent Work – Sledding – How to work with hearing-impaired dogs – Becoming a therapy dog, an animal actor, a dog blood donor, and much more!
NEW TO THE LIBRARY! THE FOCUSED PUPPY – A TRAINING SYSTEM FOR RAISING A GREAT COMPANION & PERFORMANCE DOG(207 pages) by Deborah Jones, PhD. & Judy Keller. A new puppy is a blank slate with endless possibilities. It’s a new beginning that offers you a chance to get it right and not repeat past mistakes. Anyone who has trained a dog before loves that feeling of starting fresh, believing this new puppy will be the best one ever! But a new puppy is also pressure. A new puppy means a major time commitment, not only in how much time you have to spend with him, but in being sure to do all the right things at the right moments. This book integrates the authors’ FOCUS (Fun, Obedience, Consistency, Unbelievable Success) Training System techniques with the developmental stages and specific needs of pups and young dogs. The goal is to help you prepare your puppy to become an excellent companion as well as a potential performance dog. The FOCUSed Puppy presents a variety of foundation exercises for your pup’s first year. The book tells you exactly what skills you should be working on and when. By following each step, you and your puppy will build a wonderfully rewarding relationship that will carry over into everything you do together. And once his foundation skills are set, you can easily take your training in any direction you choose. If you have adopted an older dog, the The Focused Puppy can also be helpful to you. Rather than trying to build on a faulty foundation based on previous or poorly-taught experiences, you can simply start fresh with the FOCUS Training System. Start out on the right track with your dog and build his foundation skills at the right time in the right order. And enjoy the process; you’re about to embark on an amazing learning experience! The Focused Puppy includes over 280 full color photos.
Did You Know?
If any volunteers wish to promote MAESSR and the work we do at an event in their community, please email Vicki Phillips. These are marketing events only to hand out information.
To learn more about the website, check out the tutorials here.
We’re on Mastodon now! Twitter throttles low-follower accounts, making it pointless for us to post there. Come on over to Mastodon & discover lots of other wonderful animal rescue groups, dog owners, & shelters, & posts on any topic you can think of. It works much like Twitter, so the format will be familiar.
IF YOU SEE A SPRINGER NEEDING RESCUE: For a springer being re-homed in an ad on social media or in a newspaper, please email the relinquishment team. For a springer in a shelter, please email the shelter dog team. In your email include contact info such as links to the online post, shelter name, state, and phone number.
Did you move? Did you change your email address? ADDRESS CHANGES should be emailed here. On the new website you can also set up an account under the Shop tab so that MAESSR can keep track of your mailing address; your email can also be changed under Your Account in the top right-hand corner with Edit Profile.
If you need advice regarding behavioral issues, certified and credentialed trainers that use positive methods only to help guide people to the correct resources can be found at CCPDT and IAABC.
Gentle Nudges
RAINBOW BRIDGE CROSSINGS are shared on a monthly basis. If you want your MAESSR dog included, send your name, dog’s MAESSR name if different than the post-adoption name, year of adoption, and a PHOTO to updates email. Feel free to include who fostered and a little background info about your dog. To have the information posted on our Facebook page, send it (including photos) to the social media team.
When you send your notes about events or requests for help, please cc: updates email to help ensure that all events are mentioned in the Weekly Pupdate.
Mistakes happen! Corrections or omissions to the Weekly Pupdate can be sent to the updates email.
Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!

To share pics, videos, and/or articles about your MAESSR dog to our social media team. Videos for adoption pages & YouTube channel get sent here. Be sure to include dog’s MAESSR name including number, if one, and adoption year.
Pup-ulation Report
Total dogs in our care: 26
Permanent fosters: 3
Dogs pending foster home: 3
Moving to foster home:
Buck 4 to Tim Nelson
Moving to furever homes:
None
Submitted by volunteer Cathy Moyer with thanks to those who contributed submissions/info.
PO Box 807 Goochland VA 23063 – Phone (804)774-6730












Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.