One of the last days as single ladies before Jason got back, Darwin and I went to Golden Gardens dog park. The park itself is meh... but there are great trails around the park that are fun to walk on.
Continuing my new series of Darwin on things not as impressive as Maddie, I got Dar to stand on this mossy rock. Exciting I know.
We came across a little stream and it gave Darwin the zoomies!
After Golden Garden's we picked up some lunch so we could have a picnic in the park by our house before heading home. (Yes, Darwin is still on a diet, but everyone gets a splurge day every once in a while right?!)
Darwin came to work with me the other week, and on the way in I managed to drop her bowl of food losing half of it. So at lunch we walked to the nearby pet store, Mud Bay and I decided to get her a new food toy. I figured with a food toy, I could leave it at work and wouldn't have to carry her food bowl back and forth (and potentially drop her food again). I was torn between the Busy Buddy Squirrel Dude or the TreatStik (which was on sale... and I have a hard time resisting things on sale). I ended up choosing the Busy Buddy because I liked that it was rubber and not plastic (or nylon as the TreatStik page says) and I worried about the noise of it if she's using it at work and the plastic (nylon) getting scratched up. I picked up a small bag of dog food to leave at the office too (minimize things to lug back and forth), but they didn't sell her normal food (Acana Pacifica so I chose another grain free option, Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream Formula. We came back to the office and I put a couple handfuls of kibble into the squirrel and let her at it.
Spring has finally come to Seattle (off and on) and on one Friday, Darwin came to work with me and we were able to take a walk downtown during lunch. This was the first time I got really sad about moving. The weather was a perfect spring day and I realized how much I was going to miss it. Darwin of course just saw it as great walking weather. The nice thing about our office in Seattle is that we can walk down to the SAM sculpture park and to Pike Place Market during our lunch break. {ahhhh the sun feels so good on my face} Darwin's best Maddie the Coonhound impression, though of course not nearly as impressive. (I mean come on, really?!) After the sculpture park we stopped at the butcher in the market so I could pick up raw bones for Darwin. She LOVES bone buying trips as they usually give her a little treat.
I even made a quick little video of our walk:
*BTW on a random note, I looked at the statistics for this blog, and the top 4 search keywords:
Jason's in Singapore for two months for work, and I had a work trip come up (Kuala Lumpur and a stop in Singapore) so we sent Darwin to Daynakin Great Danes for boarding. Georgia's great and I always know Darwin is in great hands when she's there. Georgia is also great because she makes great little video clips of the dogs so while I was working late in KL, I got a treat of seeing Darwin play!
Rain + Snow = Raow. We've been sticking to our goal of at least one hike/snowshoe adventure a month. So when the last weekend of January came up and we still hadn't done anything we HAD to go somewhere. We planned on snowshoeing and as luck would have it, it was a very rainy day. We decided to stick to our plan and headed out. I have to say I love driving (I'd rather drive than be a passenger) but driving when it's pouring buckets is not fun. At one point I thought we were going to get into a huge wreck as a car passing us drove through a huge puddle of water and our windshield was blinded in a blanket of water. So scary. Luckily we made it to our destination in one piece. It was still raining pretty consistently though so you are going to see iphone pictures and not good camera pictures. Now Jason is in charge of picking our hiking and snowshoeing spots and this one was another tough one. The majority of it was uphill nonstop.
There was a trail that snowmobilers used and so Darwin and I stuck to walking along that path, while Jason trekked through the trees and blazed his own trail. (Darwin tried it a couple times but she kept sinking down half a foot in the snow and she wasn't enjoying it.) The whole time Jason would walk off though, she'd pace the trail and watch him very carefully.
After an hour or so of walking up hill, we didn't make it to our destination (some view point) and we were soaked. We decided to head back down and end the day as it should be. With a beer (at Snoqualmie Brewery).
I've mentioned before how great Kristie (Boo's mom) is. She always picks Darwin up for play dates, almost once a week) and she even watches Darwin when we go out of town. She helped Kona find a new, great home and also helped place another Dane that a stranger at the park asked her to help rehome, who Kona's mom took in! Kristie learned of another Dane that needed rehoming and being the awesome person that she is she took Obi in to foster! She had him less than a week and was able to place him in his new forever home of experienced Dane owners who are part of the Marymoor Great Dane group.
Before he went to his new home though, Darwin was able to go over for a play date to meet this handsome young fellow. Here they are doing laps around the backyard (Darwin is the one making the monster noises per usual).
Here Darwin and Boo have a meet up to discuss what to do with this new guy, well Darwin does all the talking.
Darwin's laziness shows in this video. Obi keeps going, and Darwin stops halfway.
The blues separated themselves from the new kid for nap time.
But when Darwin was ready to play again she went over and tapped Obi on the head a couple times to get his attention.
Kristie had her dog trainer stop by to evaluate Obi, and while there he commented that Darwin was very regal, dominant and had a lot to say. hahaha. Very true, very true.
When we picked Darwin up that day we got a chance to meet Obi. Such a sweet guy. Around 2 years old, soft coat and so skinny, but he's got the Dane lean down and sucked up as much attention from us as he could. His new family is lucky to have him and I'm hoping we'll get to see them at the park one of these days!
There's been a lot of things going on lately so I apologize for being a bad blogger. In November I went back home to Hawaii to visit my grandma who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. On December 28 she passed away, so Jason and I went back to Hawaii last week for her funeral. Right before we left for Hawaii we got big news from work (that's a whole 'nother can of worms) so there has been a lot to deal with. Things hopefully will settle down for a bit. Since we're so far behind I haven't shared our Christmas! I'm kind of bummed I didn't get a family picture in front of the tree, oh well... here's one of Darwin though in her new Christmas collar from her brother, Boo. Darwin had a blast opening all her presents (and she got A LOT).
Some of her presents. After breakfast and cleaning up the mess we decided to head out and do some snowshoeing! We went back to Gold Creek since it's fairly close and we were starting out later in the day. (Sorry iphone pictures from here out) It was snowing when we got there so it made for very pretty, but wet conditions.
Back in November I saw on Honey's blog that she got a Zhu Zhu pet. I thought it was so funny and as soon as we were done watching the video I ordered one for Darwin's Christmas present. Here's Darwin's reaction to it:
Sorry for the low quality video... I wish we had more space for Darwin to chase it, but she still had a blast with it. After that one session though it stopped working. I hid it for a while and a couple days ago I gave it back to her and it started working, though Darwin quickly destroyed it. Plastic nose and eyes were torn out so the whole thing got trashed.
Fun toy though, even if it's not really a dog toy.
This year for Thanksgiving we stayed in town so we decided to use one of the Groupon/Living Social/one of those sites we bought for a cabin at the Kalaloch Lodge out on the Washington coast. We had grand plans to drive out there early and get a hike or two in before check-on (at 4pm) and then hike a bit more on the way back to Seattle. Our total hike count at the of the road trip = 0. That's right we got none in. hahaha. Thanksgiving day was very rainy, when we drove out to one hiking spot Jason had printed out, the roads were closed. So we tried looking for another spot, and instead we got caught in snow! We drove for a bit but got worried since we hadn't stumbled upon the hike we thought we were headed to so we turned around and decided to just keep driving to Kalaloch. We had already been driving a couple hours at this point so we stopped at a park along the Hood Canal and let Darwin out to stretch her legs. We walked along the beach and ran into this: A dead fish! I was the one who spotted it, Darwin didn't even notice it at first til I pointed it out to her.
After a few sniffs she did try to pick it up, by its mouth, but a quick "uh uh" and she walked away. We ran down the beach and ran around the park a bit before loading back up and heading west. We did get Thanksgiving lunch on the way... Jack in the Box! Darwin got her own cheeseburger and some fries. After a long drive we made it to the Lodge where we were able to check in early. Darwin settled onto a bed while we unloaded the car. Then we went to check out the beach while the sun was still out.
Beaches in Washington (and Oregon) are nothing like beaches I'm used to in Hawaii, but I love how wide and flat the beaches are here.
Wide beaches are great for spreading out and making Darwin run between us!
Though we realized it's best to do that without a bright red coat on your dog at areas where off leash dogs aren't allowed (we walked far down the beach away from people and the lodge).
Getting down to the beach was pretty easy, getting back over the logs to the stairs, not as easy. It was starting to drizzle again by this point, and Darwin was a bit nervous crossing over the slippery logs. It took some time to find the route with the widest logs and the most sand, but we did it.
We headed back to our cabin and had some relaxing down time.
