{18april2011: jump!}

This never ending winter (slow coming spring) may be having an effect on Darwin's energy level (or maybe it's her grain free kibble she's been on). She's always been a pretty high energy Dane, but lately has been even more crazy. Besides day care, play dates, 1 hour walks, and weekend dog park visits (it hasn't quite reached the point where we can get to a dog park after work with sun left), we went with our other option of giant (not legal off leash) park visit to Discovery Park. Even though it's not an off-leash park, you can usually find one or two dogs there running off leash (it's such a huge park you really can avoid running into other people/dogs).
So we headed to the park to run off some of Darwin's craziness. As usual, we split up in the giant field and had her running back and forth between us.

{boing!}

Darwin impressed us with her longest run between us yet, at least a football field length run.

After all that running we took a break and went for a longer than usual walk around the park (if you follow the trail around the whole park its a little over 2 miles, we usually end up cutting through the park). I got her to hop up on this table for a photoshoot.

As we walked around we came across a viewpoint with a log rail/barrier that Darwin promptly jumped over. We were shocked. We've tried to get her to jump over a hanging chain and she never would. This time we just walked up to the area and she quickly hopped over. She was so proud of herself.

We tried to get her to do it again on command, but I think she realized what she had done and was a little hesitant.

{braaaakkkeee!!}

We had Jason jump over with her, and then she finally did it again.

After a few jumps with her dad she built up the courage to do it on her own.

Once the jumps were conquered we moved on to Darwin's favorite part of the park, the sand pit. Here's her ostrich impersonation.

We found a stick in the sand to throw, but Darwin is such a little princess she wouldn't pick it up because of the sand on it. She would very carefully bite down on it trying to not get sand in her mouth. She eventually figured out if she stepped on one end and propped it up a bit she could get to it with out a mouthful of sand.

After all that we ended the walk with synchronized water fountain drinking.

p.s. Sorry I've been behind visiting blogs! My google reader's getting out of control. (We have seen our littlest friend Twinkie isn't feeling well, so if you haven't yet, stop by and let her and her family know you're thinking about her speedy recovery!) We just got an ipad and Im trying to figure out the best way to view my reader feed (so far I've tried the flipboard app and in Safari). Anyone have recommendations?