Playdate

Cause...

This afternoon, Duncan's buddy Cerys (who just turned 8 months old, and now outweighs him by about 25 pounds!) came to play. Both dogs seemed to have a great time, and Duncan, at least, ended up exhausted. He also ended up soaking wet, since Cerys seemed to lick, drool and/or drip a lot!

... and Effect

Here they are playing together:

At one point, Cerys apparently decided that Duncan might possibly be a sheep, and therefore should be herded:

It took at least an hour, but eventually they finally started to get tired. Even then, they didn't stop playing. They just played a bit slower:

Sherwood Forest

In an effort to give Duncan's furry little brain a bit of exercise, as well as his body, we've gone to Sherwood Forest Park a couple of times lately. It's a big park, with several soccer fields that are now abandoned for the season since soccer has moved into the bubbles. So there's lots of room for us to explore.

We started off by practicing coming when called (even when there's interesting litter):

Then we played hide and seek in the band of trees that separate two of the soccer fields. Duncan cheats a bit; we haven't managed to convinced him to hide his eyes while we hide:

We also learned to walk along the bleacher footboards, and practiced our newest trick "Go Round" on the goalpost, although that one needs a bit of work still.

RIP Lamb Chop

Sadly, Lamb Chop passed away today, at the ripe old age of about 3 months (which is ripe and old indeed for one of Duncan's stuffies!)

Lamb Chop lost his left ear and most of his tail in the course of a wrestling match in the back yard (hence the leaves). This wouldn't have been too serious – he had already survived the loss of his tongue – but somehow his brain seems to have leaked out.

Stuffing? What stuffing?

Duncan's Newest Buddy

Megan and Jax went back to school yesterday, but before they left, the critters met each other for the first time. It went amazingly well. Duncan was extremely interested in Jax, very friendly, and quite gentle (which was sensible, considering Jax's 22 claws).

Jax seemed less excited, but he's a very laid-back cat anyway. He did look a bit taken aback when Duncan licked his face. Who knows where that mouth has been?

Duncan's allergies (and ours) were better than we were afraid they might be. If he was itchier than usual it was only a slight increase; we couldn't really notice a difference. All in all, it bodes well for Christmas.

Mighty Hunter! (Or Perhaps Not?)

Duncan spent a pleasant afternoon this week harassing the rabbit (we hope it was a rabbit!) under the deck. Clearly, he is a Mighty Hunter, albeit one who doesn't quite grasp the difficulty of digging through 2-by-4 decking. Or see a problem with wagging his tail at his prey.

Except...

Well, it's a bit embarrassing, really...

You see, Jax came home with Megan for Thanksgiving. He's spent the weekend so far confined to her room, for reasons of both allergies (human and canine) and Mighty Hunters. He seems quite content; he likes Megan's big basket chair, and seems to enjoy snuggling on her his bed.

The thing is, after almost 48 hours, our Mighty Hunter apparently hasn't noticed yet that there's a cat in the house.

Camping in the County

 

This week we spent a couple of days camping at Sandbanks Provincial Park. You may recall that last year's camping trip at Pinery ended in a driving a hysterical pup home at midnight. This trip was much more successful, probably because we had the park almost to ourselves!

Admittedly, Duncan was a bit unsure about it at first, and hid in the car while we set up camp:

But once he got used to the idea, he enjoyed prowling around the campsite:

He discovered that someone had left some interesting marshmallow sticks near the firepit:

Not to mention the tasty black stick he found IN the firepit!

By this time, he was a bit grubby(!) so we went to the beach. Sandbanks has two dog beaches; the first is at one end of the main "human" beach, and is just as nice and sandy as Pinery's. Duncan had a wonderful time running on the beach and chasing sticks into the water:

The second dog beach, which we tried out later, is at the mouth of the little river that runs through the campground. The water levels seemed low so the river didn't quite make it to the lake, but that meant more room for interesting smells:

We spent a lot of time driving around exploring Prince Edward County. Duncan loves riding in the car, but we discovered that he doesn't seem to like sheep. He barked at them until they ran back into the field they had escaped from (at least we hoped it was the right field!)

The town of Picton has a fabulous leash-free park, so we arranged our explorations to include a stop there on both afternoons. It's 7+ acres, with lots of trees and seats for humans, and Duncan has a wonderful time exploring it and playing with his new friend Clancy:

We made one last stop at the beach just before we headed home. It was quite windy that morning, and the water was rougher, so Duncan didn't enjoy playing in it quite as much. Instead, we played ball: