Through rain or sleet or snow

We had rain, sleet AND snow on our Beaver Lake walk yesterday. Here you can see Tarka and Cindy with shiny, wet brows — hey, they don’t mind — that’s what thick, dogfur coats are for, braving the elements!

Frisbee duel in a snowy field

Here are Macy and Charlie Girl sharing (?) a frisbee they had retrieved in the snow. Enjoyed a bright and white dogwalk this morning at Beaver Lake. Below are a few of my favorite pics, including Sarah’s cool Lab rubber boots, a view of several of our dogs running ahead on a trail, and finally, a cool dog named Duke we met along the way; Duke insisted on carrying along what seemed like half a tree. His owner had us feel the weight of the log (is that what you’d call it?!) and indeed, it seemed about 20 pounds. Apparently this is a normal activity for Duke on his dog walks. Aren’t dogs wacky and wunderbar?!

Festive girl power

Sarah, Jan and I enjoyed a lovely walk at Beaver Lake today with our girls — as you can see above, they were all sporting festive necklace-collars (purchased at a local Dollarama) so we had plenty of nice comments as we met up with other walkers and their pets. Quite a few people also wondered what Tarka was wearing around her head, and in case you are wondering, it is a special bandage to keep her from scratching her ear (where she had a little “cosmetic surgery” to remove a wart). It does look kind of funny, but Tarka is such a good sport and just kept on truckin’ (although she did have to stay on leash) with Sarah stopping once in a while to straighten it on her head. You will see from the photo below that, in fact, she did have one ear free of the bandage. Hey, she just looked like she had some sort of crazy headband on (a la Lillian VanderZalm! — do any of you remember her?!) — you are such a funny girl, Tarka!

Winter beauties out for a walk

It is getting a little milder day by day, but it was still very chilly yesterday for our weekly Beaver Lake walk. Hey, this didn’t stop any of us from enjoying ourselves. Sarah had Charlie and Tarka with her, of course, and Cindy and Midge enjoyed themselves so much that an afternoon nap was the order of the day afterwards (and they weren’t the only ones!) Below are a couple photos showing Charlie and Tarka on a frozen puddle (not really big enough to be a pond); you can see that Tarka (nose down) likes to go skating and also to eat ice; the lower photo shows Charlie trying to figure out the walking on water thing!

So very true . . .

I came across this quote yesterday and it just rang so very true. Sarah and I were talking about dogs being such a joy this morning on our Beaver Lake walk–they truly give significant meaning to each present moment. Dogs really don’t have any bad parts, unless you want to count occasional muddy paws and sometimes jumping up on strangers, but at least that’s never intended to assault you or make away with your purse!

Poor Tarka hurt her paw this morning on the walk and we had to rescue her from a bank she had slipped down–as you can see below, she had recovered enough within fifteen minutes or so to give Charlie a good double-doggin’ dig for her money! See what I mean about dogs being silly and cute?!