Nose full of sh*t

The kid came with me Sunday for Eco's walk and at the end of it I sometimes travel through a little walkway and park so I can let her off leash. The little park is next to a townhouse complex and I've noticed that lately it's littered with dog poop. It's disgusting. Owners like that end us ruining it for all the good owners.

I knew of the dog poop in the park, I told the kid to watch where he stepped but when he threw a stick for Eco, I didn't want to be a nag and so I didn't say anything and hoped for the best. First throw went well, second throw did not. Eco raced for the stick, picked it up and immediately dropped it. She started doing this weird tongue flicking thing which creates a foamy saliva and came back to me very unhappy, I could see right away there was poop on her face and most likely in her mouth.

Ok, she may think cat poop is gourmet but dog poop disgusts her. I took every paper towel in my bag and tried to wipe her face and mouth out. But I don't think it helped. I wished I had water with me on this walk - but it's winter so I don't bother with the annoyance of water bottles.

We race walked home and finished cleaning her face. I hope that she won't get sick from this old poop that's been sitting in the park for a while. Based on the colour that dog wasn't fed very good quality food. Sure I could've stopped the kid from throwing a stick, so I take the blame, but he's a teenager and I feel like all I say is "don't do that.." "put that away" "close the door" etc..

Street Heart - spider web

Here's another to add to my "street heart"  collection, I came across this heart shape in a spider web:

Isn't that interesting? It's also really hard to get a photo of a spider web in the middle of a park in dewy, foggy weather, with a dog randomly pulling on the leash.

Alcoholic Dogs?

So I was at the dog park the other day and a guy was telling us about his alcoholic dog - that would empty any glass left unattended if there was booze in it. A glass of plain coke would sit untouched, but if it had whiskey or rum in it, it was gone.

I found this rather interesting because in many cases booze doesn't taste good at all. Why would a dog like it? And then I was reading a book and heard about another dog that loved beer. And the more I pay attention the more alcoholic dogs are hear about. This seems very intriguing to me. It just seems to be the farthest away from anything they'd like. Do you know any drunk dogs?

Mixed-Bay O' Weather

Today is one of those winter days that is nice to look at but not so nice to be in because it's going between sun and cloud and wind and rain spit. It's fun to look out the window to see the big clouds rolling by but gee I had to zip and unzip and take off and put on my coat a bunch of times.

I'm kinda glad I'm back home now.

Other people musta felt similar because we were the only ones in the dog park - it's not so fun to be in a park by yourself, although Eco makes her own fun jumping fences, sniffing trees and then running through muddy little creeks. It's a good thing she's dark brown so I don't really know how dirty she got. By the time I towelled her off at home it didn't look so bad. Silly little dog.

I lost my creative mojo this past week after I got news from one of my potential customers that $500+ were spend on shop similar to mine in the US. Congratulations to that shop but dang I thought I had it in the bag - so to speak. I've been sort of re-thinking my direction and working on marketing more. I guess there's always something to work on.

Sunshine Makes Me Happy

Oh what a lovely day it's been, sure it's cold (-6 degrees celsius) but the sun was out - loud and proud! I am so happy to see the sun, I can't even begin to tell you.

But when it's cold outside, it's cold inside and this morning it was only 16 degrees in my house, so I turned up the gas fireplace and dug out my biggest, thickest Scandinavian wool sweater - that helps a lot. It's up to 20 degrees now, that's much more bearable.

This afternoon I put on a big long scarf which I wrapped around my neck several times, a flannel baseball cap, ear muffs, a big puffy jacket and some polar fleece gloves and went for a nice dog walk. It's unfortunate that Jp can't come with me to enjoy the lovely weather and the pleasant dog walk... but he's just not that kind of a guy.

I expected the dog park to have more people but three or four can be just fine too. If the wind stops and you can stand in the sun, you can actually feel a little heat, but unfortunately the dog park was in full shade. Today's people were nice and the dogs had a pretty good time - Eco played with a mini Labradoodle called Pansy which was good for her. Many dogs overpower her and then she ends up spending all her time with the people. Today she chased it and played with it pretty good. Maybe because Pansy was only 1 1/2 years old, Eco was more comfortable with a puppy. The one man that was there said he thought the football games had something to do with so few people that were there - the rest of us weren't even aware of any football games. He told us to root for Seattle because they are the closest to us. And then for the Patriots later today because they are a better team. I don't understand sports fans.

Here's what my frosty garden looks like today: 

Did you have a sunny day? How did you spend your Saturday? 

Dog Parks are Interesting

This morning Eco and I walked up to the dog park where we met a Portugese Water Dog called Monkey. Poor Monkey had apparently spent a couple of years in the show ring before he was discarded because he wasn't doing well enough and wasn't smart enough, I was told.

Well, wasn't that the truth? This poor guy didn't know how to do anything! Not even sit. And when I tossed him a treat, it hit him in the eye. I encouraged the owner that having a less smart dog might be a good thing - he might be more tolerant of the  young children in the home and probably won't get into too much trouble, but sheesh, poor dog! And Eco didn't really know how to play with him, she's used to being the chaser but this dog didn't do anything. Luckily a guy came along with a border collier /lab cross so Eco had someone to play with for a while.

Dog parks are really interesting places to be.

Next we're off to a family BBQ for our 10 year old niece - which is also a really interesting place to be.  Hope you're having a happy Saturday.