Spring

The theme of today’s walk at the Capital News Centre is: Salad Bar.

Capital News Centre walk

I hope Spring has sprung.

Hair & Nails

It’s Sandy’s world, and we just happen to be passing through it.  She has her special friends, but if you’re not one of them, she doesn’t much care what you think.  This is especially true if you’re the one doing the grooming.
She loves it when I use the Furminator, but when Sandy sees me with dog shampoo and cotton balls, she heads for her crate and tries to look really clean.  She will not get in the bathtub.  She has no objection to a bath outside.  She’ll let me wash her with a bucket and a hose.  But in the bathtub? No way.

And we're just getting started

One of Sandy’s special friends used to own a grooming shop.  When I took Sandy in there, it was always all about Sandy.  I’d come back to pick her up, and Debbie would say, “Sandy was so good.  She went right up the ramp into the tub!” or, “Sandy really loves the dryer.”  I would say, “Is there some OTHER dog named Sandy here?”  Debbie would use a Dremel on Sandy’s nails, apparently without incident.
She sold the shop, and was working out of another dog place.  I took Sandy there.

After a bath

Sandy didn’t like it as much, but she still loved Debbie, so she put up with the other dogs and people in the place.  But eventually Debbie moved on from there, and vanished.
It’s been a long winter, and now the weather is getting warmer and the ground is going to be getting muddier.  It’s time for hair & nails.  Sandy doesn’t need clipping or anything fancy.  Just a bath and some work on her nails.  But she needs a special person.  The search is on.

Dogs and QR Codes

So far this winter seems colder and snowier than most here in Kelowna.  This morning is the first time in a couple of weeks that Sandy and I have been able to go for a long morning walk together.  The weather cooperated.  The temperature hovered around freezing, and it was not snowing or raining when we left the house.

Sandy loves the snow.  Even in her twelfth year, she wants to roll in snow, dive headfirst into snow, run through snow, and most of all track things through the snow.  In fact, she likes to track things on our walks in any kind of weather any time of the year.

Just about the only thing I like about snow is taking Sandy for walks.  I like being able to see what she smells. There were many tracks today, and I’m sure they tell a story.  Sandy seemed to think so.  We walked a long way,and her nose was to the ground most of the time.

I saw tracks that might be a deer, and was reminded of my friend Frithjof, who just started using QR codes. A QR code is like a barcode, and can be read by smart phones with reader software installed.  It can contain a link to a website, text, phone numbers, contact information, and who knows what all else.

Might be a deer

Sandy's built in scanner read those tracks and got a lot more information than I ever would.  But without the snow, I never would have known about the deer at all.  Maybe snow isn't so bad.