The Pocket Visit is now in full swing, and Booms and I had a chance to take Pocket out to some of our favorite canine haunts. Without a doubt, Pocky is very much her own girl, but all the same, she knows how to have a good time. Now she knows that we know too.
Pocket's parents are on vacation for a few weeks, and since they gave Boomie a home during his transition from his mama to me, it was no problem at all to take in Pocky rather than see her stuck in kennel or with strangers! That won't do. We are happy to have her, and are having a good time taking her around to some of our favorite spots, starting with Pt. Isabel in Richmond.
Pocky is a little more skittish than my bold chi, but in very short order, she took to the Canine Paradise that is Pt. Isabel!
On the first visit, she mostly stayed close and did lots and lots of sniffing around. She isn't exactly afraid of other dogs, but she is more interested in hanging out in our little pack.
Indeed, she has known BoomBoom a very long time, as they are long time playmates at my office. Pocket's mama now works elsewhere, so we don't get to see her very often. I can report the very good news that meeting up again this time almost instantly resparked the old fireworks between them.
Those two love a full-on throwdowns! Booms is just a little squirt, so even an otherwise dainty gal like Pocket can be a bit overwhelming for him. While she often gets the best of him, it doesn't diffuse his energy or desire to keep the battle joined.
It is fun for me to watch Boomie play with Pocket because he really doesn't just flat-out play like this with any other dog. I have thought about getting him a buddy, but I am not sure it is the right thing. He really doesn't have tons of doggie friends, and he really tolerates no other dogs outside of Pocky. I would have to foster lots of beasts to find one Booms is ok with, and I am not sure there really ever would be one, especially since I can tell that BoomBoom prefers having total dominion over the house. That there is a feisty young lady in the house who can take his BS and give it back to him with interest is something he seems not always to be wild about. Thankfully, I still have nominal control over the house, and I still get to decide things, so I am making him get over it. That he is pretty much ok with things has meant there's not too much goin' on but the fun stuff. I certainly love watching them throw down.
We have tried a mix of off-leash outdoor areas and dog parks with Pocket, and I am getting the sense that she prefers off leash nature areas to the dog parks. It isn't that she is bad at the doggie parks, but she doesn't seem very comfortable, preferring to hang out under my chair and do a loud, barking alligator charge from underneath it at passing doggies. I am still gonna try to get her to groove on the doggie park way, but she hasn't seemed to enjoy them nearly as much as she likes Pt. Richmond or Carmel.
We had another one of our freaky-hot weekends, so my first inclination was to see what the weather in "The Most Dog-Friendly City In America" was going to be like. I normally hate the foggy-cold there, and pretty much only go during freak warm-sunny weekend days, or during Indian Summer. The forecast said 75 and sunny in Carmel, so we went. The forecast was wrong.
It was basically 55, foggy, windy, and shitty. Had I known, I wouldn't have gone, however, it actually was hot as hades and sunny for 95% of the ride down. I thought I had hit another miracle beach weekend in Dog City, and was prepped to blow young Pocket's mind. As it turns out, Pocky is very heat averse, and it blew her mind to find so much relief from the heat down on the beach. Dogs win, I lose. The usual.
Pocky seemed a little overwhelmed by the beach at first, but eventually I figured out that she loved the beach, it was the waves at the water's edge she didn't dig. She loved the walk down to the beach, and I have figured out she loved being in our little pack walking around, but that she doesn't really have a ton of interest in getting a scrum with other packs of doggies on the beach. Booms does love running up on dogs he doesn't know (because he thinks he is social director of all off-leash areas and needs to establish order), and Pocket pretty much either stayed by me as he did his "I kick sand in your face" routine to the nice, family dogs there to fetch a stick or wade in the surf. I was happy to have her hang out.
I wouldn't say that Pocket is totally under voice command yet. She doesn't run away in the sense that she sees the release of the leash as her chance to make a break for it. Rather, taking the leash off means she can just get lost in tracking down whatever her nose suggests what might be interesting. She never gets outside of eye range without eventually realizing she got separated, and at that, will run back, but at the same time, if she is off on an adventure, her first instinct is to go where she pleases whether I am trying to corral the beasts or not. She won't come right away when call nicely all the time, but I have learned that an ignored first hail is usually heeded if it becomes more determined and includes the command of "sit". This is good enough for me to feel we are going to do just fine hitting the hot spots while she is with us.
BoomBoom loves the beach. I wish more beaches allowed dogs than Carmel and Marin Headlands. Marin's sand is tough for him to walk on and Carmel is f'ing far and cold. I am gonna just have to learn to deal with it because Boomie loves Carmel beach in particular. Once he hits that hill, he is off like he has keys to the city from Dirty Harry himself. He loves walking through town too since so many businesses set out water bowls and treats (not to mention restaurants that seat doggies.)
I didn't plan to take Booms and Pocky out for a sit down lunch since I wasn't willing to wait for a seat only to have to sit out in the cold. We mostly planned on doing our beach walk up and down, and then head out. We did this, but we ended up having to cut things short...
...I will spare you more detailed photos, but for some reason, the beach was littered with dead seals and sea lions. I have no idea why they were any there at all, let alone several. I have less idea why they were just sitting there still on a busy Saturday afternoon. In any event, they were just sitting there - fresh enough I am thinking since there was no strong stink - and no matter how much I scowled, I couldn't keep the doggies from becoming interested in them. One thing I can't risk is letting our guest catch some exotic disease of the murky depths transferred via sniffing, so I had to eventually slap the leashes on and head out to our other Carmel haunt, the Garland Ranch.
Garland Ranch is a county park that is about 10 miles inland and outside Carmel Valley rather than Carmel-by-the-Sea. It is literally set in the middle of paradise, and its weather is nearly perfect.
I work with someone who grew up in Carmel Valley, and have asked him weather or not he knew while growing up there that he grew up in paradise itself. He says when he was very young, he didn't know, but eventually, they all figured it out. I would be pissed if they didn't know the difference!
I find that part of Cali to be a parody of itself in some ways, but one of the things you can't say is that the swells in Cali practice their snobbery via an open caste system. To the contrary, they extend no small effort at remaining somewhat egalitarian about making sure there are reasonable opportunities for everyone to have access to some of the best and most beautiful areas. Carmel's beaches are open to all, and having a place like Garland Ranch, with the Carmel River flowing right through, is really quite amazing. It is slowly becoming one of my favorite places in the state, and I have barely scratched its surface. My exposure has mostly been on the flat trails, with bias towards those with some access to tree canopy since my companions wear black fur coats in the sun. Thankfully, we had plenty of them to use for pit stops.
I have to keep reminding myself that doggies can't sweat, nor can they operate water fountains. The kids were draggin' and panting pretty good not long after we started, so every chance we had, we stopped for a cold drink, some shaded rest, and a check for ticks/fleas. While Pocky has pretty long legs for a weener-dog mix, even she has short legs, and so an easy hike for me is much more work for them, so I decided to take it easy on them.
In time, the pace - which had started with some trotting and outright running - became slower. Between the dog park in Morgan Hill that we visited on a pit stop during the drive down, the beach, and the first half of the loop at the Garland Ranch, I started picking them up for a brief rest as we made the home stretch. Neither objected at all, which they usually do by running away if they don't want to be picked up.
It wasn't too hot by my standards, but in time, during a break, a nice breeze started up, and this helped pep up the little poopers and they aimed their pippers for home once we could hear the road again.
I admit to taking joy in being able to outlast the little coyotes. As Cesar Milan says, they are most receptive to human oversight when they have been tired by exercise, and so it is a moment of significant enjoyment for me to not only outlast the little demons, but to be able to use their exhaustion to re-establish proper order of man over beast! My joy was even greater here since Garland Ranch also allows horses! The look on the face of the little doggies seeing a massive steed cross by us on the path ahead was priceless. I didn't have the camera handy enough to capture their dual looks of utter befuddlement that those huge creatures were running loose, but I guarantee, they both gave me a WTF? look I will long cherish.
Eventually, we headed for home. We hit a few new doggie parks as potty stops on the way home. Los Gatos had a HUGE astro-turf section in the middle, and BoomBoom nearly went to the moon with glee at being able to do his patented growling back-itch-to-ecstasy to his heart's content. I liked the park at Los Gatos, but they had that ridiculous $6 to park that too many parks in Santa Clara County have for us to go back (FU for $6!) Plus, it was 105 degrees, and no amount of shade or water was enough for the kids. We made a quick stop at a park in Sunnyvale that we hadn't been to before too. Awesome park, and the dog park within is pretty nice too, but no separate area for little dogs is a bit of a no-no for us. Maybe we'll be back in a pinch, but with Morgan Hill having such an awesome park, it is tough to justify the expense or lack of small-dog domain when rollin' in the dirt-dirt-dirty South Bay.
Come Sunday, I decided to use the hot weather to head back to the Marina Point off-leash area in San Leandro out by the Oakland airport. The wind off the water there can be brutal, and it is mostly loose-rock and asphalt (not Boom's favorite), so of all the nearby, large-acreage off-leash parks, it is the one we hit least. Indeed, it was warm enough for me to be happy with the visit, but the way the dogs acted, it must have been WAY hotter than I realized.
Almost from the second we got there, the two of them were totally dragging ass. Seriously, they were acting 100% wiped out almost from the beginning.
I am getting pretty good at packing for the doggie outings, and the easiest way to have cold water all day is to freeze it the night before, and drink it throughout the day as it melts. They nearly attacked me for water at our first little stop and drank most of the melt off on the first visit, leaving only the thermos with stuff that was only just cold when we got out of the car. Between the massive drink and dragging ass, I decided we needed to find some shade and just hang out until they stopped panting and were mellow-Rockafellow. We found an awesome stand of small trees with a path throughout that did just the trick.
We rested and rested, and rather than finish, I decided to just cut back across the middle of the park rather than make them do the loop. I actually think they started the day wiped out, and their heart just wasn't in it. We ended up whiling away the rest of the beautiful day at the Alameda Small Dog park in the shade where I got some reading done, got caught up on my mail, and shot the breeze with the other victims of small dog ownership. The day was sufficiently hot that the dog park wasn't too hoppin'. Plus, it was gay pride parade day, so perhaps there were people otherwise occupied - no matter since we had a nice enough day whiling away the day. Eventually we headed home and the little nuts slept like they had been on a forced march.
Little do they know, I am saving that for next weekend.
Posted by rudayday at June 28, 2009 10:35 PM