Pit stop at Apple on the way to work

Last night Louise and I met Tony, a two year old English Bulldog who was very eager to introduce himself. Being just a youngster, he really wanted Louise to play with him, but of course she was having none of that. She was good around him, but absolutely refused to give chase, no matter how many times he suggested it. In the end, he really didn't mind though - I think he was just happy to be outside instead of indoors being settled down for the night.
In the morning, Louise set off with my wife and I to check out the newest Apple store - the first one in this part of Canada. I think she liked the idea of being allowed into the mall, even though the stroller had to be zipped up. She kept meeting little kids in strollers who really liked being surprised by a dog. My wife had to help us get to the lower level of the skytrain station when it was time to leave because we could not locate the required elevators to get to the level for outbound trains. That meant collapsing the stroller and having Louise navigate an escalator on foot. Once she was on, she took a seat and enjoyed the ride. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.

Fun on the long weekend

Louise and I have a lot of photos to share this post. The long weekend is just wrapping up for us, and I have had the opportunity to take Louise out on several long walks. The weather was really nice and it seems that most of Vancouver made it out to enjoy the sun by the water.After playing along the seawall, we headed over to Barclay Park, where Louise had to inspect the fountain. By that point she was pretty warm from the sun, so I had to lift her up to let her get a drink from the middle portion of the fountain. Obviously, I wasn't able to catch a photo of that exercise, since I only have two arms.

We also walked past a few beaches, and Louise is already running into the water. (She had stopped over the winter, indicating that she does have some sense, at least.) Here you can see her stopping in the middle of the beach to see if it is okay to proceed or not before taking the plunge.
Before coming home with a wet dog, we continued walking along the seawall and wandered past some wildflowers - something I haven't seen in Vancouver very often. In fact, the last time I saw flowers like these was along the Coquihalla highway. At the time, there were a few other dogs being walked along this part, so Louise really didn't care much for the flowers and it took quite a bit of coaxing to get her to sit still long enough for me to take a photo. By the time we took these photos though, it was getting dark, and time to head home.
When we got back, it was time to give Louise a bath - she was in False Creek, after all and let's face it - that's nasty water on the best of days. Once again, I forgot to take a photo of Louise covered in suds, but one day I might remember. Of course, some video of her getting crazy while being toweled off might be more entertaining too.

Stroller Post

This photo was taken in the elevator at the Burrard Skytrain Station. We had nothing else to do but wait, as it is possibly one of the slowest elevators in all of Vancouver.

Seriously, it takes several minutes to go from the lower level to street level (4 levels, no stops).

As you can see, we tend to use the stroller in 'convertible mode' instead of fully zipping it up and enclosing Louise. This serves two purposes - one, she likes it better, and two, I can reach down to pet her, or distract her from barking at cars (usually the latter).

Water features in the rain

Living in Vancouver has us walking in the rain quite frequently. While a walk in the sun is usually preferred, Louise usually doesn't care one little bit. The only real exception to this would be if she found it to be too cold, or she had a serious case of the lazies.

If you look closely in this photo, you can see that Louise is in fact, quite wet at this point. Even so, she was careful not to fall in while posing in this local water feature. She had to hop across about 4 of these concrete pads to get to her current position.

Earlier in the walk we came across some Canada geese and their young. The parents were all hissy and protective (understandably), so we didn't get any good pictures of that. Just some blurry ones as one of the parents decided to run at us with its wings outstretched. Dang I wish that one wasn't such a blur. For the record, we were walking along a path that brought us near the geese. We weren't trying to approach them, although that's what the goose apparently thought. Louise was pretty good and did not bark at all. I think she clued in that it was a parent protecting its young so the whole situation was acceptable to her.

Crazy posters and windy days

Okay, I just had to upload this picture. I could see it from my boss's window and could already see the crazy in it. At lunch time I stepped out to grab a photo. The pug with an afro kind of reminds me of when the Rock did that one movie with one. I don't know why.

But enough of the crazy posters. On the weekend I had Louise out for another walk along English Bay and the wind had really picked up. You can see in the photo that the water is a dirtier shade of brown instead of the usual blue or green. That, and the waves are being whipped by the wind to the point where we actually had some sea foam in places. I haven't seen that since being on the east coast. Somehow, all those tulips survived and were not blown out of their roots. Other than the wind, it was actually quite a nice day and when we went out later to celebratemother's day (by having sushi at Shabusen) we had to dress quite a bit warmer.

All in all, it was a pretty darned good day.

Lunch with the boys

Louise and I went for a walk along the new developments close to the office the other day, and when we did, she met with some of the construction workers having their lunch.

It was not easy getting her to leave alone a bunch of men with food in their hands.

They all enjoyed her company and thought she was funny, so no harm was done. At least she didn't try jumping up on them or go over the top with her begging skills.

Same spot at night, wide awake

While out walking Louise tonight I thought it might be fun to take another photo of the same spot as last time, this time at night. I had to really play with this photo in Gimp in order to tone down the yellow light and to draw out any other colour at all.

Perhaps there are some photo editing wizards out there who know better about these things but every time I desaturate a colour I find it difficult to then bump up the other colours. The one exception in this photo was the red from the rose bush behind Louise. I guess that colour was distinct enough that the photo editor could work with it. What I would have really liked was to bump up the green from the flower stems though.

At any rate, Louise didn't mind me fussing with the camera - this was near the end of our walk and she was only too happy to sit on the bench until I was ready to continue on home.

Morning Walks Sometimes Need a Break

Yawning on a bench
Originally uploaded by iTripped

I took this photo this morning as I gave Louise a quick walk before I went to work. While she was excited about going outside, it was clear that the walk was earlier than she was used to. I had her hop up on this park bench because I liked the rose bush in the background. As she was sitting there she yawned - just as I took the photo. It's the kind of shot that I should submit to loldogs, as it is begging for a caption, I think.

Louise has been hit by another internet Meme, this time by Pug and Bugg. I decided to use today's photo and title to satisfy the rules.

The meme rules are as follows:
1) Write your own six word memoir.
2) Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you'd like.
3) Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4) Tag at least five more blogs with links.
5) Don't forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

So without further ado, here are the blogs I am about to tag in this meme:
Owned by Pugs
Urban Pug
Life of a Pug
Iggy and Bella
Batgirl was a Librarian
Pug Possessed