Virtual Dog Walk

Cadie and I did not go to beach, instead we went back to Sherwood Park. Let me walk you through a typical walk.

We start out by stopping in at the park nearest to us. As you can see it's a great park, the reason we don't really use it is that it's a little too close. Cadie needs a god long walk before her run, as you saw earlier today, cutting out one element of her evening routine leaves her restless.

We head right through the park and out onto street. We walk straight up Mt. Pleasant, window shopping and occasionally running into friends. We also pass a high school with a nice big lawn which always has some wonderful scents.

We continue heading north until we get the Sherwood. Cadie starts to get really excited as she starts to recognize the street leading into the park.

As I've said before the when we first go into Sherwood Park Cadie demands that I throw her tennis ball. So I throw it down into the first bowl, and across the floor of the valley. From there I grab her leash and take her up a steep hill into the baseball bowl where she likes to play catch for a good 20 to 30 minutes. A lot of her time there is spent laying around in the grass. The baseball bowl has a thick bed of long, verdant grass, it's perfect for us. The hills make chasing tennis balls a lot more fun, and the soft grass is a nice cool place to sit and relax for a couple of minutes. I try not to keep her there too long. After a good run I take the ball and  to then try to get Cadie to leave the baseball bowl. This takes some time, and involves a couple of sit ins.

When I finally get her out of the baseball bowl we head over for a quick drink.

After which we head into the official off-leash area, which is a nice hiking trail. We go through the trail once. Trail is a wide, dirt path, with lots of big trees bordering it, and in some cases coming up right in the middle of the path. It also has a nice wooden bride that goes over a small creek. This path is very popular with dog owners, joggers and sometimes cyclists. So it's great time to practice our recall and for me to teach Cadie to get out of the way of oncoming pedestrians, a skill I think every dog, needs whether they are urban dogs or not.







Then head for home, where Cadie gets a giant bowl of food, and a comfortable couch to rest on while she dreams about our next trip to the park.

This all makes for one happy dog!