Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Park Day

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Today we’re joining our friend Gizmo and his buddy Finn Howard for Parks Day.  A day designed to celebrate and share the beauty of your favorite park.

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Long time readers of this blog know that our preferred walk is in our park.  The tiny little park at the top of our street.  The park’s formal name is Boulder Ridge Park.

Our park is not like your typical city or state park.  There are no areas for picnicking, no benches, no bathroom facilities and no place to swim.

Just a big beautiful field perfect for getting your puppy zoomies on and lots of nice trails for hiking.

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The enormous field is used for LaCrosse practice three times per week from mid-March until early June, I usually try to schedule our walks so we don’t interfere with their practice.

There are three main trails.  The yellow trail is the easiest, with slight hills and fairly clear trails.  The blue and yellow is slightly more difficult, with tree stumps, and small rocks.  The orange trail is the longest and also the hardest, with many steep inclines designed for those who like a little bit of a challenge.

Most of the trails are contained within the park and generally intersect with one of the other trails at some point.  The orange trail encircles the park and from start to finish would generally take us about 30 to 40 minutes. The blue and yellow trail leads down to and then crosses the local rail trail where you can pick it up and follow it in to Valley Falls, a beautiful town maintained park, with many more miles of hiking trails (and picnic areas, bathroom facilities and swimming.) 😀

Because the trails lead outside of the park, It’s important to understand the markings for the trail system.

IMG_4755 This marker indicates I’m on the orange trail which shifts to the left, while intersecting with the blue and yellow which would drift off to the right.

IMG_4757 There are also some unmarked trails that have been made either by the deer or two-legged adventurers, no worries they all lead somewhere.

In the last 18 months or so, we’ve had three pretty bad storms, Snowtober of 2011 dumped a lot of wet heavy snow.  Unfortunately most of the trees still had their leaves.   Many branches and trees that didn’t break from the weight of the snow, were weakened.  With each subsequent storm (Sandy last fall and the Blizzard of 2013) more and more limbs and trees fall.

IMG_4745 Most of the trees/branches miraculously fell off the trails.  In other areas, hikers move what we can.

IMG_4748 Whenever possible we use the downed trees to practice agility jumps.

IMG_4747 Of course sometimes it’s just not possible.

Even without all the facilities a state park has, our little park is just perfect for us.  It’s super convenient (I can walk the dogs there in less than two minutes,) it’s far away from busy roads so a dog with a good recall can be off-leash and it’s really not used by a lot of people (not counting LaCrosse of course.)

Plus we get to do fun things like climb rocks.

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 This is the Park’s Day blog hop hosted by Gizmo and Finn Howard. Visit Gizmo to add your link.

Follow-Up Friday, April 26, 2013

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Welcome to the latest edition of co-hosted Follow-up Friday.

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I’m very pleased to introduce you to a new co-hostess this week.  We’ve been slowly getting to know one another by reading each others blogs.  What I’ve learned thus far is she lives in Wisconsin with her husband and her four fur babies, Norman, Nellie, Gambler and Glory.  She hunts with her dogs, (how cool is that?) she shows and hunt tests Gambler and Glory, and she’s recently been writing some beautiful posts about her late father.

Did you guess JoAnn Stancer from Sand Spring Chesapeakes?  If you didn’t, then please be sure to hop on over and get to know her.

And remember, co-hosting is easy, just ask JoAnn. I have co-hosts lined up for the next two weeks but after that I’ll be back to begging.

Black and White Sunday

As luck would have it, I can’t locate the original photo.  I know, I know, I just made it into black and white. But I can’t remember where I put it.

B and W Sunday 4-21-13 So here’s another one from the same photo shoot.

Pawm2 WM

This photo (and a number of others) were taken almost two years ago when I participated in a Back to School blog party hosted by Frankie Furter.   Our ‘session’ in the hop was Prom Etiquette.  I know, can you imagine Delilah teaching etiquette to anyone?

I didn’t think so.

A couple of you asked if Sampson was wearing a tie, as you can see in the color photo, yes he was.

This Dog will be the Death of me.

Honestly either Delilah will kill me either by giving me a heart attack or making me fall on the trail.  The other scenario which I am constantly worried about is that one of these days she will eat something that will kill her.

As it turns out, she came through this scare with flying colors.  Not without a few tense days on my part. Hubby figured out who sent the packing peanuts so I placed a frantic call and was advised the majority of them were made from potato starch.  (No wonder she was desperate to eat them.)

I never liked packing peanuts because of the mess, although with a dog like Delilah…

When Hubby announced at 6:00 am Tuesday morning that she’d taken a big dump, I shot out of bed like a cannon. She DID?

Poor Delilah couldn’t figure out what I was so excited about.

Gizmo said, “I hope everything “comes out” OK “in the end” (humor helps, right?)”  Yes it does.  Although I don’t think I laughed much that first day.

Leslie said, “Oh man, dogs are good at providing us with gray hair, aren’t they?”  You don’t know the half of it Leslie, between the kids and Delilah I’m just about completely gray.

ACD6Pak said, “I’m thinking that you’ll be out there in the dark with a flashlight won’t you?” Damn straight I was! Followed her around like I was a lovestruck school girl.  I think I scared her.

Tracking Spring

IMG_4722 Here is my latest photo, taken yesterday afternoon.

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I thought I should throw in a picture of the bush in my back yard.

Vermont Soap Giveaway

Shannon said, “I wonder if it would help with Rogue’s allergy itchies?”

My contact at Vermont Soap said, “This shampoo will help. We just released a new Hot Spot Oil for pets as well. It is designed to treat irritated itchy spots on pets. Try it out, I think your dog will be very happy!”

There you have it, straight from the expert. 😀

This ‘N That Thursday

Most of you can relate to this issue and I’ll tell you the truth.  When we walk in the woods if the dogs go way off trail, I don’t usually follow them in to pick it up.

I heard that.

When they poop in the field I always pick it up.  When they poop on the trails, I usually pick it up, but if I’m really lazy I flick it off to the side.

2 Brown Dawgs said, “We did talk poop on FB didn’t we? It was there for all our friends to see. :)” LOL yes, yes we did.  In fact, I think I even said “I can’t believe we’re talking poop on facebook.” 😀

Emma said, “We only poop on walks, we learn no pooping in the yard as puppies.” I was wondering why that is?  And what happens if your human is really sick and can’t take you for a walk?  Where do you go?

Thanks for joining JoAnn and I for Follow-up Friday.  Have a great weekend.

This is the Follow-up Friday blog hop, the blog hop that let’s you wrap up your week and leads you right into the weekend.

This ‘N That Thursday – April 25, 2013

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Today we once again join our friends at 2 Brown Dawgs for This ‘N That Thursday.

You know, some days you have a little of THIS or a little of THAT, but not always enough for a full blog post.  This ‘N That Thursday can be anything you want it to be, so grab the badge and join us.

Land Mines

Tuesday while walking the dogs Hubby said, watch out for that land mine.  I looked down and then did a double take as I noticed something shiny.  Yes, I notice shiny things.

My first thought was oh my god, the dog ate a fish hook.  Upon closer inspection (I did stop to clean it up) it was actually a Snickers wrapper.

I took a picture of it to show you.  It looks fine on the camera, but when you look at on the computer, it’s too disgusting for words.  So I’m not sharing.

You’re welcome.

I tell you this for two reasons.  1) Somewhere near my house there is a person who is not paying attention to what their dog is eating.   2) Tuesday on The Poodle (and dog) Blog, Jan posted about an artist in Manhattan who draws toilets around dog poop he finds on the sidewalk.

In the same post, Jan mentioned a town in England that is spray painting poop, in an attempt to shame owners into picking up after their dogs.

It made me wonder if that might not work in my neck of the woods. 🙂

Listen, if you’re in my inner circle, you talk poop.  If you hang around this blog long enough, sooner or later you’ll be talking poop too.  If you really pay attention, you might just be facebooking about poop like I found myself doing with 2 Brown Dawgs the other day.

It’s just another bodily function.

And we all do it.

Relax, you’re among friends here.

Tracking spring.

Technically this should be saved for tomorrow’s post but I did want to update you on my project.

Tuesday's Buds Tuesday it was very cold and rainy.  The tree that I’m monitoring had it’s little buds all closed up nice and tight protecting them.

Wednesday Yesterday the weather turned warm again, and once again the little leaves ventured out.

Tomorrow I’ll have a photo of today’s walk and once the leaves are completely out, I’ll post all the pictures.

I’m beginning to notice many of the trees are budding now, it’s beginning to look a lot like spring in my area. How’s spring advancing in your neck of the woods?  Are you seeing progress or does winter still have you in her icy grip?

 

 

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