{31aug2012: mosquito walk}

Excuse the absence. Work's been crazy busy!
As I mentioned in the tick post, there's an abandoned railway that we've been taking Darwin on for walks. Great for off leash walks, bad for me as the mosquitoes here seem to love me and whenever we walk down there I can guarantee to get at least 3 new bites. Ugh.

To get there we have to walk a couple blocks from our temporary house (we will FINALLY move into our place next week - still in walking distance to the railway!) and there is so much for Darwin to smell!

There are also quite a number of dogs that live around us and whenever we walk by they go nuts barking at Dar. She's been really good at ignoring them and just hurrying  past.

Once we get to the trail we'll check to see that there aren't any walkers/joggers/dogs and if it's clear (which it usually is) we'll let her go!

Darwin loves when its been raining because then she gets to run through the puddles of mud.

 

Off leash time makes Darwin very happy!

{23april2012: downtown walk}

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:

evolution of darwin

4

barely covered girls

3

"great dane" marymoor park sunday meeting

2

rock hard pebble poop

1

hahahhaha

{21dec2010: Bffs}

The other week we had Friday stay with us again.  It was a beautiful Saturday morning so we thought we'd start the day with a walk around the neighborhood and a stop to get breakfast and coffee.

While Jason was inside the bakery checking out the goods, Friday was making friends with dogs in the neighborhood.

{Hi my bff.}

Even though Jason was dying to get home to watch one of the last weekends of college football, I made us take a detour to this look out to get a picture.

We also stopped at a park to let the dogs get some zoomies out for a little bit.

Even though we've done this walk a ton of times, this time I realized how much I like the fact that we can see the Space Needle while we're out walking.

Happy Holidays from Darwin and Friday!

{20dec2010: update}

We woke up Saturday to no power and pouring down rain.  Since I needed a clean pee sample for Darwin we thought we'd take her down to the garage to find a covered spot to do our collecting.  Darwin was so confused as to why we would take her to the garage to use the bathroom.  Even though she hates the rain she found the one uncovered area to walk out to do her business. I quickly slid a tupperware container under her to get our sample.  Of course I read online not to get the first drops, so I waited til she went a little then slid the container under using a rubber glove covered hand, but since she had already gone a little the container slid in pee and I didn't think about it til I touched the bottom of the container with the non gloved hand and got pee on me anyway.  hahaha.  
It took a while to figure out how to get the garage door open since the power was out (thank goodness for Facebook friends who are smarter than we are) but once we did we dropped off her sample for testing.  We had a bunch of errands to run and so Darwin came with us and we walked around the neighborhood by the vet and ran into this cute little Golden puppy tied outside one of the stores.  She REALLY wanted to play with Dar.




I don't think Darwin was quite sure what to make of this hyper leash biting puppy and though they had a small round of bitey face, she was quickly over it and we moved on. We did see another dog tied up outside another store and he was not as friendly.  As we approached him he quickly jumped up and arched his back and showed teeth. Not a friendly puppy.  We crossed the street and avoided him (I was kind of annoyed because I did want to look at the store he was in front of but was unsure of him after that).  I don't understand how people can tie their dogs up outside a public area if their dog is that angry.  It's happened before in our neighborhood when we tried to walk to the store a dog went crazy barking and snarling at Darwin as we tried to walk by.  If your dog is slightly aggressive or scared of other dogs don't leave him where he could cause harm to someone else. 
Anyway it was a good weekend and Darwin had a blast at the park yesterday, then last night she started whining/yelping again.  We were worried about it because she was more vocal than last time so I called the vet first thing in the morning and the vet tech said it could be bladder stones, but no crystals were found in her sample but it could be that they had just turned to stones already, so we made an appointment and I took her in.  The vet said her urine test from Saturday came back totally clean and with normal gravity levels and no crystals or blood so while it was possible stones could have formed it seemed unlikely.  She stretched out Darwin's back legs and checked her spine and Darwin showed signs of pain when she did that.  The vet thinks Dar just strained some muscles from running hard at the park yesterday and said to restrict her off leash play and do hot and cold compresses and massages and gave us some Tramadol to ease the pain.  It has been a few weeks since our last acupuncture appointment so we may need to book another one soon.  Let's hope this resolves the random whining and we can stop worrying about it!

{165 days old}

Darwin and I went for a long walk one day (2+ miles round trip) so I could go pick up some clothes I had dropped off at the alteration place.  The store next to the alterations place is a cute little pet boutique store, Mes Amis.  So I stopped in to get Darwin a treat since she was walking so nicely on the leash.  

As soon as I had paid she was ready for her treat, so I handed it to her and she was soooo happy to have it.  Of course we still had a mile to walk to get home and she proudly walked the entire way home with her new treat in her mouth.  
She did of course try to stop a few times to eat her treat, but we made it home.  As soon as we reached the front gate though, she seemed more excited that she made it home and forgot about her treat, dropping it, leaving it for me to bring in.