Octoberfest includes Chestnuts

Okay, this first photo is of Louise with yet another chestnut in her mouth. What is unusual about this one is that she decided it was the right one to start chewing on, and managed to drive one of her K9 teeth so deep into it that I had to pull it off the tooth for her.

At least there was no risk of her choking on it. Sheesh. Still, she has oodles of fun with this, as evidenced by her furious tail wagging. I took a brief video of her chasing chestnuts, which I will add to the end of this post.

Of course, chestnuts aren't the only thing going on this time of the year - oh no. Last weekend while on our morning walk we got a call from Holly who was wondering what we should have for brunch. We decided that it would be a good idea to go to Starbucks and get some pumpkin spice lattes, along with a few things to eat as well. It was a bit of an indulgence but that was okay because Louise just loves waiting outside a Starbucks coffee shop - I think she assumes that there will be some treats in it for her if she does. She sure likes her Vancouver Island oat bars.

Of course she's right too, when we got home we ate our snacks (and shared a little with Louise) and drank our drinks - but ultimately concluded that the pumpkin spice latte is far too sweet for it to taste good. We have also tried a similar drink at Blendz but had similar results there too. It might be nice to find a pumpkin spiced drink that had the spice like a chai tea and a good pumpkin flavour without being filled with sugar on top.

Not that Louise cared one iota. She got her oat bar.

Autumn Antics

Vancouver is a funny place when the seasons change. Not all of the cherry blossoms come at once and similarly, not all of the trees drop their leaves at the same time. Instead, the season stretches out for weeks, as trees of different types react to the colder weather on their own schedules.

Incidentally, this is quite possibly Louise's favorite season - it's still nice and warm during the day, yet not too hot to be bothersome. Also, she has that habit of chasing after chestnuts and well, they are dropping quite regularly this week. I'm surprised people still park their cars under chestnut trees during fall, since the dropping nuts have been known to dent them.

In a week or so I expect the wind to pick up and when it does, Louise should have some good times chasing after the leaves. As you can see by today's photos though, she isn't much interested in them at the moment.

New Pet Beds!

While the old pet bed we had for Louise was good, it was starting to get a bit old and well, we were hoping for something just a little bit smaller, to fit our apartment a bit better. It was time to see about getting something new, so that's what we ended up doing.

Credit has to go to Holly for all the hard work of searching through all the various places that might sell such a thing, and to find something suitable. We ended up buying the pet beds from Jysk, which is kind of like an Ikea store on a budget.

Anyhow, we get home and swap out the beds and all of the animals go crazy for them. Louise curled up in hers almost immediately and Sophie did the same. We only got two pet beds because of the cats, they never seemed to want to use them at the same time. But on this day Sassy was feeling a little left out. The cats took turns though, so it was okay, and we noted that we need to plan for a possible third pet bed location in the living room.

The beds are called 'Pet's Pad' and so far they have been holding up, although they don't have a removable slip cover like the last one. We will have to see if they are better or worse in terms of maintenance, as Louise likes to eat her treats on her bed.

Rainy days, sunny days, it's all good

Lately the weather has been a mixed bag, much like it is around here every year. It does slow down Louise a bit because well, she doesn't like to get her paws wet. It's not that specifically, but there have been more than one occasion where we get set to take Louise out for a walk but once she gets outside and sees the rain, she opts to turn around and go back inside.

You can almost hear her say 'Nah, I don't have to go that bad. Let's go back inside."

There you go folks, that's about as close as you will see me get to speaking in Louise's voice. At least here on this blog. Anyway, Louise has been kicking along, investigating skunks (which always scares the crap out of me when it happens), terrorizing our cats and napping wherever she pleases.

Fire up the barbecue!

A while ago I learned that I either take my camera with me on EVERY dog walk, or I accept the fact that I am going to miss a lot of great photo opportunities. The plan for yesterday was to wake up and take Louise out for her morning stretch so that Holly and I could get some things done in preparation for a BBQ party we were throwing that evening. While I had no intention of taking pictures of Louise that trip, I took the camera out of habit and am glad that I did.

We ran into Nemo and... oh my. Just like that, I have forgotten the name of the other dog. With any luck we can get a comment from someone who knows better than I. At any rate, the dogs were happy to see each other and nobody was misbehaving, although at one point we did have to step on the leash for the one-who's-name-I-have-forgotten to prevent him from dashing off in chase of a car.

Anyway, these dogs are clever and have figured out how to bypass the fence at the church next door. Louise spent a few extra minutes with them exploring the church grounds but then we had to get going.

She had a bit of a nap while we stepped out to do some grocery shopping but was up again once we got home, following us back and forth to the patio we were going to hold the bbq at. Basically what it meant was that for a pug who is used to sleeping away large portions of the day, she was on her feet until the party was done, either begging or visiting with anyone who would give her treats or pets, which as it turns out, was just about everybody who came to visit.

So it's no surprise that our little dog is making up for lost time and is sleeping pretty hard today.

Move that fence

You know, there are some days I sit down to do a blog post for Wheezie and I have no idea what I'm going to say. I just have a few good pictures taken from various points in the week and a glass too many of wine poured into me I guess. Anyway, Louise is here sleeping next to me and we thought it was a good idea to actually reach out to her fans again.

So here we are. Louise has been having a great August, with lots of trips into the office. I never quite understand the enthusiasm since when we get there she is bored and moans that I'm not taking her out, or she naps and wakes up to find me missing and has to go hunt me down, etc. But despite my bewilderment she absolutely loves it when she gets to come to work and if she doesn't, I call the vet because she must be sick. It's that rare.

Oh yeah, after putting the second picture on I remembered something to tell you about, dear reader. As you may know by now, the church on our street has been sold to a developer who wants to put up a highrise rental building instead. The entire community is in an uproar over it because well, nobody likes the idea. So just to be nasty about it the developer put up an ugly fence to keep people out of the gardens in the front of the lot. Well the way it was installed was a bit illegal as it was right up to the sidewalk and yes, this caused another uproar from the people. Well as you can sort of see in the photo, they were told to move the fence back to the legal limits - I guess the city lays claim to the property a certain distance from the sidewalk and they weren't allowed to fence it off.

Finally, I'm finishing off with a quick shot I took while Louise and I went to pick up a craigslist item. I had the air conditioning blasting on her to keep the temperatures cool enough and she seemed to enjoy it. She enjoyed getting home more though but that might have had more to do with the fact that it was getting close to dinnertime.

So innocent and harmless...

Okay, so where do we start? Louise came in to work with me two times last week - it just worked out that I was able to bring her in on Friday as well as her usual Wednesday. As usual we went for a walk during our lunch break and we decided to check out the Olympic Village again. To be honest I am just curious to find out when the new London Drugs store is going to open as it would be conveniently close to the office. Still not open yet.

Anyway, in this first picture Louise is posing with the BC Place Stadium in the background. Note all the cranes and whatnot? Also note the absence of the inflatable roof? That is because they are putting in a new retractable dome style roof, or at least that's what I have heard.

Since that didn't interest Louise any, we continued on our walk and I found a spot where I could take pictures of her with those crazy birds in the background. I tried to get shots where it looked like the bird was whispering in her ear, or some other nonsense but it really didn't work out that well. Here's the best one of the bunch, you can figure out if there is a caption that could go with it or not.

Next up we decided to take a bit of a break before heading back to the office. I found a spot where we could sit in the shade and then tried to photograph Louise wearing my shades. It did NOT go over well. Generally speaking Louise doesn't like anybody messing with her face so it took several tries before she learned that I was not going to mess with her nose roll or anything else like that.

Later, on the way home, we met up with Chester. He's a pug that lives on our street and he's about the same age as Louise. He's normally quite happy to see Louise but today we had Louise's stroller with us and well, she got a little protective of it. Chester felt the date wasn't going so well when Louise started barking at him to get away from her ride. Don't take it personally Chester, she treats all the guys that way.

On Saturday the West End had the annual Dog Fair - I think that is what they call it. If you recall, last year we were there and filmed Louise eating a cupcake. I linked to it again recently and we hoped to do something similar this year but well, things didn't work out that way. Louise was pretty enthused to go to the dog park again, but wasn't the best behaved dog at the show, so we had to cut short our time there. I think it was a combination of the heat, the availability of treats and the high number of other dogs that just had her getting a bit too aggressive. She has to learn that not all treats are for her. In fairness, I also could be doing a better job at keeping her in line during times of high excitement.

Moving on, because we are all about the good times at Heavy Breathing, we have a picture of Louise sitting like a good dog as we participated in a contest to see who was the softest dog at the show. While Louise does have soft fur for her breed, we just couldn't compete with an Irish Setter, who won the show. But that was okay, they still had prizes for everyone, and the next picture is of Louise and I, holding the cup we got for participating.

No other dogs were actually harmed in the making of this blog post. We came close a couple times, but so far, so good.

Bonus leftover photo post

Louise and I just got back from our morning walk - today is going to be pretty hot so we made sure to get out earlier before the heat became an issue. For me, this is the perfect Saturday in August, weather-wise. For Louise, not so much. I think she would prefer the perfect Saturday in late September, or even October.

Despite that we had a nice walk along Robson Street, coming back to the house through the side streets in the West End. Many of those streets are well shaded by trees, which also helped to keep Louise comfortable. While I brought my camera with me, I didn't end up taking any photos. Some times I just get lost in the moment and enjoy walking with our dog. Today was one of those days.

So instead, I'm treating you to some of the photos taken over the last couple weeks - some of the other ones that for whatever reason, didn't make it to the blog at the time they were taken.

A year ago there was an event held at the local dog park for all the pet-supply-vendors to show off their new stuff. There were representatives from Louise's favorite pet store, Bosley's as well as a bunch of others, ranging from those selling bike trailers for pets to doggie day care spots to various pet food resellers. Oh, and who can forget Louise eating her cupcake treat (complete with liver flavoured 'icing').

Anyhow, that event is coming up again soon, perhaps next week. Holly saw it mentioned in one of the local papers but wasn't sure what the date was so this morning Louise and I headed up there before our main walk 'just in case'. We will be happy to check out what is going on again this year - so if we manage to get there again, look forward to more adventures and possibly more film clips of Louise doing something silly. Or maybe just dog-like.

Okay, this last photo was one I hoped to include during the fireworks but really, I was never quite able to capture what was going on the way I hoped. It was during one of the nights we had fireworks, when the local roads were closed to allow the increase in pedestrian traffic. These four Japanese students were quite taken with Louise, who was only too happy to sit and let them take pictures of her. 'Kawaii' is probably one of the first Japanese words I learned thanks to Louise - it means 'cute' and she hears it often enough that sometimes she responds to it.