Sometimes Bowser sleeps or sits in ways that make me scratch my head in disbelief.
Do your dogs do this? Please reassure me 🤣.
We hope you are finding some comfortable places to sleep this weekend.
Rock on,
The WB
Last Sunday, I showed you a cell phone (and a bag of trash) that we picked up on the trail. Well, this time we picked up (or truth-be-told, were picked up by) another dog.
This young female bounded out of a side trail and glommed onto the both of us immediately. She wouldn’t leave us, even when we met other doggos (and their minders) that were more her size and amenable to her…ahem…rough, playful energy.
We went to a nearby holiday trailer park resort but no one there recognized “Missy” (as another person on social media named her. More on that later…). I kept hoping that she would bound away again at some point but Missy followed us all the way home. I gave her food (a couple of cups of Bowser’s horrifically expensive schnauzer chow) and water and secured her in my daughter’s yard. I took Bowser to my place and posted about Missy on our community’s Facebook page and also on ROAM (as one person on the trail suggested). I also called Animal Control to come pick her up as she wouldn’t let me touch her – despite her apparent friendliness – and there was no way I could coax her into a vehicle to take her anywhere.
Missy was howling at being left in my daughter’s yard all alone, and when I went to check on Missy then Bowser was barking at being left behind at my house. So we all ended up together, waiting for Animal Control…
Animal Control did show up about an hour later and they were no more successful at getting close to her than I was. Things escalated, and Missy escaped through the back fence and into the neighbourhood. I saw a lot of Facebook postings about her after that, and the next day another person was able to get her secured, and again Animal Control was contacted. By this time, all of us who encountered Missy were thinking along the same lines: that she had been “dumped” – abandoned by her owners – and left to fend for herself.
What was especially heart-breaking about this situation was reading on Facebook about how exhausted and scared, and also that Missy had returned to the trail and was found lying beside a pile of women’s clothing. Which makes me wonder if the clothing contained the scent of her former owners, or reminded her of them somehow. I really do believe she was abandoned, and perhaps that person had left the clothing there to get her to stay near that spot.
This time Animal Control were successful, and (not without a huge struggle) Missy was contained and taken away – hopefully to be adopted into a more loving home than her last one.
As someone who grew up on an isolated property on the outskirts of town, I am no stranger to animals being dumped. At least once a year a car would pull up at our house (usually in the middle of the night) and a dog or cat would be cast out, and then the car would accelerate away. I suppose they thought because we had a large property with pets and a barn, we would welcome more pets. Once in a wee while we did, but mostly we had to take them to the local SPCA as we already had enough animals of our own to care for.
Please love your animals and, if you can’t look after them anymore, take them to an agency that will try to rehome them. Don’t leave it to chance.*
Rock on,
The WB
*I know I am preaching to the choir here. None of my regular readers would ever be so cruel as to abandon an animal. I felt I had to close this post with this message, though. I apologize that it is not my usual cute little doggy post.
Despite a cold, wet spring here on the Island, things are happening in my little garden! And I am “shopping” daily in my backyard to put things on my plate.
I planted peas for the first time – snow, sugar snap and shelling peas – all of which are becoming my go-to snacks as well as being featured at meal time.
I’ve been making a lot of these simple and quick rice bowl meals.
And for dessert?
Please join me and my co-host Donna (she’s back!!!) and let us know what’s on your plate this month! Feel free to leave a link in the Comments or join the Link Party:
Rock on,
The WB
I’ve been working for a while now at the Come Command with Bowser. (With Schnauzers, it DO take a while. They are stubborn creatures. IYKYK!). He is pretty good at responding (and quickly) now that he knows there are treats involved. Usually.
We hope you are having an exciting weekend, with lots of snacks.
Rock on,
The WB
Longtime readers may remember that I took a Basic Kayak Skills course almost a year ago. You can read about that, here. Even though I gained much in knowledge and confidence from that course I knew there was still much more I needed to learn, and further training was definitely going to be on the agenda.
After all, my aim as I am aging and adventuring is to “Be an inspiration, not a cautionary tale!” 😉 🤣
To that end it was a no-brainer to go back to Caroline Ross and her company CrossCurrents Kayak to grow my sea kayaking knowledge and skills.
After Basic, the next rung on the Paddle Canada ladder for skills certification is Sea Kayak Skills – Level 1. In this weekend-long course I practiced all the rescue skills and strokes learned in the first course plus I learned the basics on how to read a marine chart and navigation, where to find weather and tide information and what it means to paddlers, and even more rescue techniques and strokes (including the all-important self-rescue).
All photos from this point forward were taken by Caroline and generously shared to our group.
By close to the end of that day, I was a shivering, teeth-chattering mess. And I was starting to think that a dry-suit might not be that fucking damn prohibitively expensive after all.
Second day – Brickyard Beach, Nanoose Bay
As you might have noticed, the weather was much more favourable on Day 2. Even though we were in the colder ocean, I stayed warmer due to all my layers and the rise in ambient temperature.
Once again, I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge and confidence in such a short period of time. I also learned that I’m going to stop at Level 1 Certification. Level 2 involves building skills for activities that I don’t anticipate ever doing – such as choosing to kayak in rougher waters than I’d ever be comfortable in. Level 1 was plenty hard enough on my body and I have the bruises to prove it!
Thanks to this course, on my shopping list as if I didn’t already own enough gear is:
I can’t recommend Caroline and CrossCurrents Kayak enough. You can find her not only on her website, but also on Facebook and Instagram.
Rock on,
The WB
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.
We hope you are keeping cool and planning adventures this weekend.
Rock on,
The WB
It’s patio season again! And as usual, it’s a race to get to my favourite seat before you know who claims it first.
All hail the Patio King! We hope you are having a royally good weekend.
Rock on,
The WB
Just because …
True confession time: the last time I can recall eating stewed rhubarb was the night before I gave birth to my son. I was 2 days over my due date, it was August in Ontario, Canada (if you know, you know), and I was completely over being a whale a walking refrigerator a weeble pregnant. I thought the rhubarb might get something started, and…my son was born at 930am the next morning. So all hail the power of rhubarb! Actually, my daughter was also born exactly 2 days past my expected date too, and no rhubarb was involved. But let’s give kudos and credit to the all-knowing, all-powerful rhubarb!
Anyhoodle! Flash forward to the present day (almost 39 years later), and I finally have gotten around to stewing my own rhubarb from my own garden again. I can’t explain the long break other than to say I had somehow convinced myself that I didn’t like rhubarb and since I had no pregnancy to push (pardon the pun 😉) to conclusion, there was no need to eat any! Gentle reader, how wrong I was…
This spring I rediscovered this amazing plant (conveniently growing in my backyard) and have been on a bit of a rhubarb tear, ever since.
I have also discovered the wonder that is a rhubarb crisp.
Rhubarb is such a tough and amazing plant – you’ll know just how tough it is if you ever try to remove it from your yard, like my son-in-law is trying with his rhubarb patch It’s not that he doesn’t like rhubarb – he just wants to put something else in that prime growing location. Good luck with that, SIL!
How do you feel about the wonderful spring tonic that is rhubarb? How do you use it, if you do?
Please tell all in the Comments! This month my lovely co-host Donna has gone walkies so you just get me and no link party either, as that is her area of expertise. Sorry, eh! 🇨🇦
Rock on,
The WB
Have I mentioned before that Bowser likes to be petted as he drifts off to sleep? Well, he also enjoys a luxurious massage as he wakes back up. I did not see doggy masseuse on my retirement bingo card, but here we are.
We hope you take the time to enjoy life’s little luxuries this weekend.
Rock on,
The WB
