A Spring-like walk in Winter

We have been having some lovely warm weather here in the Vancouver area - pretty much the only part of Canada that is not only above zero degrees celsius, but also in the plus digits - 11 to 13 degrees, with a warm wind coming up the Pacific coast bringing an unseasonable but welcome 15 degrees the other morning.

I had to buy Eco another bag of food, and so I decided to take her along for the ride since there is a nice off leash park nearby. This is the first time I've left Eco in the car when I went into a store. I really don't like doing that but the weather seemed to be favourable and it was a short trip inside - plus she got lots of treats when I came back.

After the shopping it was off to the park when he was over-stimulated by so many new smells. She didn't calm down as I tried to cross a football sized field to get to the dog area. She started her off leash experience with a swim and followed it with a sprint through the trails.

Eco is normally a super happy labrador, but I tell you she was 10x  happier running in those trails. She would run ahead and then come racing back to ensure I was following her. We ended up getting so high in the trails I was in line with the setting sun, and could not longer hear the traffic or the people below. I tried to take a shortcut on what I thought was a trail, but when Eco started to look like she couldn't follow the trail, I trusted my dog and returned to trail that she confidently followed. We soon emerged at the other end of the park, exactly where I wanted to be.

She was soaking wet and full of mud but very happy. We came home and went straight to the tub where for the first 3 minutes I thought I was washing off her chocolate colour - that's how much mud came out of her!