A Milestone

Yes, this is my hundredth blog post. This blog, that started in February, just before the Olympics, is now 10 months old, and yes! has 100 posts. To celebrate, I took Cadie back to her two favourite dog parks Sherwood and Sunnybrook.

Friday was a great day for me, we knocked off work early, had a wonderful lunch at the Estates of Sunnybrook, and then I took advantage of the extra time by taking Cadie for a good long walk, and romp around Sherwood Park.

 It was the perfect day. Sunny and not too cold, and Cadie was able to play in the park for her usual hour in her favourite spots. But even with the early start, evening comes early in December, and the light is soon started to disappear, it was practically dusk by the time we left the trail at 4:30.

But, night also, must come to an end, and in the morning we headed up to the official off leash dog park at Sunnybrook. Again, the weather was beautiful, bright, sunny, and not too cold, despite the frost on the grass.

Normally I don't take Cadie's leash off in this park because she doesn't have the best recall there, but all the work we've been doing has paid off, and she came every time I called her, and soon her leash came off.

The morning wore on, and Cadie had had her fill of chasing balls, so we decided to spend some time exploring the foot trails that surround the park. This was a really nice treat. It was totally new scenery for me, and new smells for Cadie.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again, the weather was perfect, and Cadie confidently trotted along, super happy, seeing this walk through an urban park, as an adventure...that's right, an adventure on the end of a designer leash.

After a good play and a good walk, we headed back to the car, and then home, where we warmed up under a blanket, while drinking hot tea.

I hope you've enjoyed reading our 100th post, as much as we enjoyed living it!

Photo Gifts

I know that it's weird to be writing about the weekend on a Wednesday. But I find the middle of the week so tiring. The worst day of the week is clearly Tuesday YUCK! But Wednesday can be pretty bad too.

Cadie and I played host to our good friend W on Saturday. We had my famous egg salad sandwiches, on a fresh baguette and fresh veggies. But W came over for another reason. I was going through my photos looking for a nice one of Cadie and myself when I noticed that all of the pictures of me were taken by my ex. Not only is it disturbing to think that the only photos you have of yourself were taken by an ex, these photos are now very out-of-date. They're two years old, I was much heavier and Cadie was a puppy. It was time for some new photos. So W came over and here is what she gave me.






A pensive Cadie, trying her best to please her new best friend



Sitting pretty so that W will pet her



Me watching Cadie play, you can also see the dilapidated baseball diamond



You might think that Cadie is playing, but really, she's protecting her ball from this interloper

Excellent recall, she just wanted to make sure W saw her being so good




Finally, I have something updated, and we look fantastic together don't we?

As you know every picture has a story, this story is that Cadie was driven to distraction by my insisting on getting a photo. As far as Cadie was concerned she was at the park to chase the ball and nothing else, so getting this shot was a bit of a struggle. I had to rein her in multiple times, and in the end W had to shoot almost blindly, because we had only a couple of seconds before Cadie wormed her way free and ran off to find her ball again.

 

All in all, a very successful weekend as far as I'm concerned. So thank you to W for giving me such beautiful pictures of my little Cadie, and of the two of us. It's nice to have photos with good memories attached to them.

Gone with the Squirrels...AGAIN!

Cadie and I had a great morning at the park, she ran, and chased her ball. We had a great "hike" then we were headed out of the park when Cadie caught sight of a squirrel and off she went. She took off through the brush, and all I could see or hear of her was the clinking of her name tags against each other.

She came when I called her, but she was covered in burrs, and had a piece of leaf stuck on her eye ball. I have an eye ball aversion, I just can't handle looking at or touching eye balls, but aversion or not, I had to get Cadie's eye cleaned out, so we headed to the washroom and where I got the leaf out and started pulling the burrs out of her hair.

The de-burring continued most of the day, and I'm pretty sure I just felt another one as I was sitting down to start this entry. I have plans to go to a ball game tomorrow, but I think that we're going to have to find some time for a bath.

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!

How Much of a Walk Do You Really Need?

So all that worry and concern was for nothing. Cadie is fine; in fact it was me that ended up in bed early last night. After months of hot humid weather we finally had a good solid couple of days of rain, it started mid day on Saturday, and continued until late last night. The sky is still bleak this morning, but I did see the sun trying to peak out while I was driving in. Yesterday was the day when the whole weather situation finally caught up with me.

I’m prone to migraines and hot, humid and wet weather just does me in. Yesterday I started to feel the pain around about noon, but I’m still new at my job, and I’ve already had to call in once, so I forced myself to stick out the afternoon. I made it. I also managed to maintain verticality until after Cadie’s (truncated) walk, because I knew that she wouldn’t be able to sit still even though I wasn’t feeling well.

The problem with the walk was that it started to drizzle just as we arrived at the park. We were already there, and I knew that Cadie wouldn’t allow herself to be taken home without going to the park at all, so I gave in and took her.

Sherwood Park is shaped like a big bowl, one giant valley after another, (it even has a baseball diamond at the bottom of one of it’s valley’s. I has assumed that it was no longer being used, because the kids in the outfield would be standing on a hill, but if you get to the park about 7 o’clock you’ll see tons of little kids all wearing the same shirt and throwing baseballs back and forth, so I guess they still use it.) Normally, I toss the ball for Cadie down into the first bowl, and across the floor of the valley, then we head over to the baseball bowl where she likes to play catch for a good 20 to 30 minutes (I believe that if Cadie were a child she’d have me at baseball and soccer games every evening). After which we head into the official off-leash area, which is a nice hiking trail. We go through the trail once, about 15 minutes, and then we head up the hill to the first valley. I toss the ball across the valley floor, heading out of the park this time. Then I grab Cadie’s leash and try to pull her to the top of the bowl, where she gets a liver treat for being such a great little dog. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to get Cadie out of the park. Afterwards we head home (about 30 minutes). The whole thing takes a little more than 2 hours.

Last night though, as I said we got there just as it was starting to rain, so I took Cadie into the first bowl, toss the tennis ball and then started the fight to leave the park (it took 15 minutes last night), then we walked home, where I forced myself to stay awake.

Poor Cadie, she doesn’t understand that her mommy doesn’t feel well, so she kept trying to play, and I kept dozing off trying to relieve the pressure between my ears. Anyhow I am keeping a close eye on the weather, if it’s sunny, I might even take Cadie to the beach tonight, we’ll have a lot of pent-up energy to get rid of.

The Grand Tour

I have been fortunate enough to have a benefactor. That’s right a benefactor, I don’t another person who can make that claim, and even if they could, I suspect that my benefactor is much more generous.

This last weekend my benefactor gave me a car. I KNOW! I am super excited to be mobile. I drive to work now, and I am saving myself about 40 minutes a day in the commute, but I am now able to do small things like stop after work for groceries, rather than having to set time aside for it during the week.

As it so happens I didn’t have any food in the house on Monday night. Well, I shouldn’t say that I didn’t have any food, I had turtle food, but Cadie and I were SOL.

So I decided to stop on my way home. What I didn’t know is that my neighborhood pet food store decided to close an hour early this week, so I was getting there just as they were locking the door. Grrr.

Oh well, no problem, Cadie hopped into the passenger seat and headed out. We went to 3 pet food stores before we finally found her food, but then, since we were already out that way we decided to stop in at Sunnybrook Park. Cadie loves a good park, and she although she has only been to Sunnybrook once, it seems to be a favourite. I have no idea why, but there you have it. I made the mistake of taking her leash off and getting her back was a real struggle. She was having so much fun, she refused to come anywhere near me, in case I was intending to make her leave the park (but it's unreasonable, we can't live at the dog park)

So away she went, where she played and played, refusing to come to me when it was time to go. I almost lost her, except that a friend of mine was able to grab her collar. So we hopped back in the car and headed for home, and thanks to Hermione (my car’s name) Cadie was able to have a nice dinner.

Yesterday morning I woke to find that I did not have any breakfast foods at home, so I made the decision to stop and do my groceries on my way home. It was great. I often stop for some groceries on my way home from work, but it was just great to be able to get everything done, in one fell swoop.

Last night we also had to pop over to my brother’s apartment to feed his turtles, they are huge, and were very happy to see us come in. Once the turtles were all provided for we decided to head over to Eglinton Park. Cadie has been there exactly once too, though she doesn’t seem to love it as much as she does Sunnybrook (Go figure, dogs are weird sometimes).

Anyhow, tonight the grand tour of Toronto’s best parks continues, and I am hoping to get her back to Sherwood. Are there any other fab parks we should take in while we’re at it?