Like having a 2 year old child

This doggo....is driving me insane.  After three days of impeccable behaviour, the last two days have been sheer havoc.  Yesterday he landed me on my butt in the park, everything is kind of sore today, but I don't think there's any real damage.  My ego no longer exists as such, and there were no witnesses.  And he didn't catch whatever it was he took off after, spinning me around, snapping my left shoulder (it made a weird noise, but nothing doesn't work now, so I think it's ok), and he landing on his back, mainly because I outweigh him by a factor of 5 or so.

The good thing is, we were already past the muddy section when this all happened.  Yes, it's still muddy, even tho the rain has mostly stopped.  I think the water table is so high it won't dry out until we get a full-fledged drought.

Then this morning on our walk, he tried again to spin me, but failed.  I was more or less on to him this time.  And just an hour or so ago, he decided to try to play with Lucy, a tiny Shitzu up the block, who would mostly like to remove his face.  When he calmed down a bit, she did as well.  She's actually adorable, and soft, and silky.  But initial impressions are rough.  And she has a height advantage, her house is up a bigger hill, so she's got an impressive array of stairs to charge down in order to mount her offensive.  Kind of reminds me of the Imperial Palace in Beijing.

Did I mention inter-dog relations are fun and fascinating?  Must be some reason I didn't.

Speaking of silky, here's a pic I took right after his bath on Friday.  He got so mucked up from the dog parks, he really needed a good cleaning,  He actually left muddy prints on my bathroom mat after he hopped out of the tub. 

On Thursday, we did our first ever major-ish excursion, driving up to Union City to visit a friend.  Said friend lives in a huge apartment building on the hill overlooking Hoboken and NYC.  So, in addition to the long car ride and mucho traffic, we had the first ever experiences of an elevator.  He kind of got the idea, more or less.  And he started exploring the maze of stuff in my friend's apt, which is sort of random because there is work being done on the exterior of the building, and the dust is spectacular, so nothing is in its right place at the moment. 

Fortunately, there's a nice dog park across the street from the building, and we went over there for a while.  Not a lot of dogs; in fact, only two, one at a time, who he played with voraciously.  They had fun.

Unlike the dog park we go to near home, this one had no grass, it was filled with a sort of coarse sandy gravel stuff, like you might expect at a kid's playground.  Of course it absorbs smells of whoever has been there before, so that was a fun thing for the great tracking hound.  And the thing I like the most, which we could really use in our dog park, but I understand the myriad of reasons we don't have one, it has a fountain, with a human height spout as well as a dog height one, which is human operated - so the dogs can't run it themselves, and flood out the whole park.  This is an excellent idea, especially after having had to get accustomed to lugging a water supply and bowl with us to our DP all the time.  One of the benefits of being urban as opposed to suburban. 

I still think every DP needs a taco truck, tho.  Watching dogs play is hungry business.  But yeah, I know, you don't really want food in there, it gets too complicated.  Dogs and food, not so perfect together.

And next time we go up there, I really want to get out somewhere and do some pics of the NYC skyline.  It's pretty dramatic.  But it was very hot, and the dog was in unfamiliar territory, and it wasn't possible on this trip.  Maybe in the fall.  Maybe the traffic won't be quite so bad then.

First sandy nose ever!

Running errands this afternoon, we stopped by Grandma's place, and since she wasn't home yet, we took a little walk by the beach.  Yes, no dogs on the beach in summer, but that's ok, it's too hot today anyhow, but we took a look, and on the way back, stopped to rest under the bridge, because shade.  He discovered sand.  And how lovely it is to dig holes in sand, and to stick your snout in it.  Now we can't wait for cooler weather!  Next time we might even get near the water, and maybe try that if we're feeling bold.

Keep in mind that Bandit is a dog who thinks his backyard doggie pool is a very large water bowl. 

Learning new things is fun!

Red lilies have opened!

These are the ones that never got a chance to bloom, when they were in the front yard.  Moved them to the back yard when the roses went in, and voila!

And as a bonus, the daylilies are starting to open.  We're just full of lilies this week. 

To balance, something came along last night and ate the flowers off the orange ones in front.  Hope they enjoyed the snack!

I guess the saying is right - if something isn't eating your landscape, it's not part of the ecosystem.

That flowery time of year

Must be all the rain, I have flowers all over the place.  Everything is blooming, even the stuff that the deer usually eat before the flowers get a chance. 

Yeah, I like dandelions, too.  And my yard full of clover, which has a lovely scent to it.  And I just laugh at the landscaper types who want to remove the moss from between my patio stones.  Leave my moss alone!

Flower power!

Bandit missed this one!

Bandit is a hunter, or so he thinks.  He always scopes out the yard before he goes down the stairs, to see what's out there that he can chase.  I'm glad that so far, he hasn't actually caught anything.

But he follows his nose everywhere, searching for scents to things he thinks he'd like to chase, and maybe even catch.

We went to the nature trail at our local park, the park where Pablo loved to go, because of the smells.  And the wildlife.  It was Pablo's favorite park, so we'll call it Pablo's Park, or PP.  Apt description, I'm sure a lot of the smells are from pee, of various critters.

A lot of the squeamish people I know would never set foot outdoors if they ever thought about who and what pees and poops on the outdoors.  A lot of them live near me.

Anyhow, the one that bandit missed.  We had just squished through a very muddy section of the trail, and I was making noise at the dog because he barely missed landing me head first in the deepest part of the mud, when we came around a corner and guess who's looking at us?

 
She, I think it's a she, was just standing there, giving us the eye.  Very still.  Very quiet.  She never moved, just stood there.  I got a couple of pics, not very good ones, because I'm still not in sufficient control of the dog to use a real camera when I'm walking him, so I took them with the phone, which, truth be told, takes lousy pictures.  Good enuf for small applications, but they really suck if you look at them full screen, and don't even waste ink trying to print them.  Samsung S9, I highly dis-recommend it if you like to use your phone for pictures.

I know she was real, she did turn her head at one point.  And I spoke to her, very softly, so she wouldn't run away (which likely would have resulted in Bandit making chase, and dragging me thru all sorts of muddy stuff). 

All this, and doggo, the great hunter, didn't see or smell the deer.  Amazing.  So I now know that not only is there no retriever of any sort in him, he's also faking the great hunter thing.  Cheaper than a DNA test.

She's probably out in the park, still laughing about it.