Fog dog

 

We had an amazing foggy morning and pretty much all of Seward Park to ourselves! 

 

 

 

 

 

We head around the 2.5 mile loop to watch the fog.

 

 

 

 

Beautiful colors on lake Washington

 

 

 

Lots to smell

 

 

 

"Who's down there?"

 

 

 

 

Time to move on! On this loop (when no one is around) we practice a lot of off leash recall. We may practice this over 50 times on this 2.5 mile loop.  If someone is coming I recall D'light and leash him. I do this even if the person doesn't have a dog.  Not everyone likes dogs and as a responsible dog person we all should be able to manage our dogs if we let them off leash in a public area.  Off leash recall is an important skill and I wish more people had verbal control over their dogs when they are off leash.  Being charged by an off leash dogs (I don't care if the dog is friendly) is a major pet peeve of mine.  I've shared many a not so nice words with people around their inability to verbally manage their dog when it's off leash.  If you can't  verbally recall your dog with distractors of people or other dogs then your dog should not be off leash.

 

 

 

 

We check out the rock beach of the park

 

 

 

Boy on the move!

 

 

 

Verbal recall in action and he's reinforced with high value food to reinforce his recall behavior. 

 

 

 

Beautiful view and what a great morning to be out!

 

 

 

 

"I work for treats!"

 

Time for a game!  There were a number of large rocks on the beach.  I placed a number of treats along the rocks and it's time for the game of "find it".

 

 

 

 

 

This is a great game to build confidence while working the mind and body. 

 

 

" I found all of them!"

 

  

 

We make our way up into the wooded section of the park. As you can see D'light is leashed up. Verbal recall is not reliable when he is crittering.  This doesn't make him bad or dumb it just that crittering is way more reinforcing to him than verbal recall to me.  So, he critters on a 40ft long line. 

 

 

Critter time!

 

 

 

Pretty Madrone trees through out the park

 

 

 

Gotta get it!

 

 

 

Time to head back to the car

 

 

 

"Why are we leaving so soon, we've only been here two hours!"

 

 

 

One more check before heading out.  We will be back soon enough.

 

Finally a little sun!

We've had a lot of grey rainy days. So, when the sun decided to shine the dogs quickly found the lone  sun spot!

 


 
 

 

Nothing like a good rest in the December sun.

 

 

My favorite photo!

 

 

Chilly adventure - Part 2

 Here's part one if you missed it Chilly adventure

 

 

We head over to Interlaken Park which is a 50+ acre heavily wooded park.  We are at the top of the steep sloping park.

"That's a long ways down!"

Beautiful view of Union Bay, Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains.

Time to get a move on!

Catty isn't all that fond of trail hikes.  She will do them but, I think she finds them to be rather boring.  She'd much rather be in city reading pee mail, sniffing the sidewalks and looking to eat any garbage she can find along the way.

This was a good workout for her and she kept up like a champ!

Catty says "Keep moving you two!"

The frost covered leaves were beautiful

There actually was a bunch of garbage dumped on this trail which is too bad.  Catty thought it was great!

A fallen tree with ice all over the exposed roots

If you ignored the garbage on the trail, it was beautiful. This was a nice fern wall stretching up the hillside.

More frost covered leaves, rocks and ferns

D'light is after a squirrel!

"Did you see where it went?!"

"Where are you!"

Sniffing the air to see if he can locate it!

"Can we please get going!"

Off we go

We find this at the bottom of this trail

I wouldn't recommend the upper part of this Interlaken trail but, glad we checked it out.  The trail dumps you on this road which is not safe and we were hustling to get to a safer spot.

We get to a better road and find this lookout spot

Off we go and we need to start heading home before it gets dark.  There is more of Interlaken Park and when we skirted other parts of the park, the trails looked much better than where we had come from.  So, that will be for another trip.

We are back on city streets and we have an hour walk home. Catty was excited about that!

We make it home in time to watch a beautiful view off our deck as the sun goes down!