Half a day's work

I took the morning off work on Louise's day in the office so that meant she was here for only half of the day. I think that animals get used to a routine because when it was time to leave, she was clearly impatient, like she knew she was late or something. She literally could not wait to get outside and on the way.

Of course, once we were here it was the usual routine of visiting people in the kitchen, waiting to go outside for a walk and of course, napping. She tries so hard to stay awake some days but never quite makes it.

Hot weekend

Okay, my wife would probably disagree, but according to Louise, this weekend was pretty hot, especially inside. I don't think it ever got past 'tolerable' but there were several times when we had a hot pug laying on the floor trying to feel some of the coolness. This first shot was taken at Barclay Park as Louise and I stuck to shady streets. Oh yeah! I almost forgot to mention that she jumped into the fountain. Luckily there was only about an inch of water so it was all good - just cooled off her paws a bit.

We were also trying to get some things done around the house and that included selling a few chairs (among other things.) The cats were not too pleased at all to lose several of their favorite spots and at one point Louise took up residence on our (soon to be demolished) cat tower. Well, not entirely demolished, but I did give up and remove the top piece pictured here simply because it gathered too much pet hair over time and was hard to clean. We will probably figure out something else that is less messy for the future.

Sit down protest

Louise has her own way of communicating with us. She usually only barks when she is excited, so if she is not enthused over something, we have to look for other cues. For example, if she doesn't feel like going on her regular walk, or if we are going in a direction away from the pet store, she will sometimes do a 'sit down protest' where she basically refuses to move. I've seen the same thing near the entrance to our condo when she doesn't want to go inside yet. Usually she can be coerced if need be. But she's pretty clear at getting her point across.

On the flip side, sometimes I am the one who is feeling tired while walking and I want to sit on a bench for a bit. Louise will usually sit with me until she is ready to resume walking. This typically gives me a minute or two before she gets restless, at which point she will no longer be content to sit on the bench, or really anywhere at all. If I don't get up right away, she will sometimes sigh heavily to express her impatience.

Bridge Crossing at Lunch Time

Today was fairly typical for Louise and I as we headed into the office. We arrived at the normal time, we took our lunch walk at the normal time, we even walked along the same route as usual. Nothing much out of the ordinary.

Sometimes 'Ordinary' is just all right.

Louise is starting to get more comfortable around the office people and less dependent on being around me all the time. In fact, she is at the point where I can be quite boring. Yes, as shocking as that sounds, it is true. But that's okay because she never wanders far and the other employees enjoy her visits.

As I mentioned, we took our walk along our usual route along the newly constructed sea wall for the Olympic Village. It's still pretty noisy, since construction is still well under way for many of the new condo buildings but the walkway itself has been open to the public for a while now. We went as far as the bridge (I'm sure it has a name, but I haven't bothered to look it up) and noticed they have installed some chairs in places. Just as we ordinarily do, we then turned around and headed back to the office. Which was just fine by us.

Tour de Waterfront

Okay, I have a lot of photos today. Saturday morning usually means a nice long walk and today was no exception. We started out going to the farmer's market, met a few familiar dogs there but our goal was to head to the waterfront, so we didn't stay long.

Along the way we stopped to take some photos by some of the water fountains. There are quite a few water features in the downtown area which is just a little odd when you consider how rainy our climate can be. Still, I think they are a nice touch and they offer some soothing noise to compete against the constant backdrop of traffic sounds.

While at the waterfront, it started to rain a bit so Louise and I took some shelter under an awning until it subsided. That's one of the nice things about Vancouver rain - a lot of the time that it is raining, there is no wind. So any overhang makes for a dry spot. Once we got moving again, we noticed a small garden area with some unusual grass. I like how it clumps together and looks like it doesn't need to be mowed.

On our way back it started to rain lightly again, so we took shelter in Bark & Fitz, a local pet store that seems to specialize in gear for dogs. They were thrilled to meet Louise and even more so to discover that she has a blog. Since they also have some great dogs, we might see another blog created soon. After that, we headed home for a bit of a nap for Louise while I assisted with grocery shopping. (My role here is mostly to carry stuff home.)

It's a good thing we started out earlier today because with the spotty weather our afternoon walk had more rain, which is just less fun.

Pride Parade

Today was the Vancouver Pride Parade - Louise and I turned out to show our support. We went down to Denman street, which was on the parade route and it was already lined with a healthy sized crowd an hour before the show. I asked this gentleman to hold Louise while I got a picture for her blog and he was kind enough to oblige. As it turns out, he has a couple dogs of his own so he was pretty good with her.

As usual, she just liked the extra attention.

Later, we wound up back at the church next door, who were also preparing a float for the parade. By this time Louise was getting a little warm and she started to roll around in the grass. She was acting quite silly and was in a rare mood when I got this last photo, which I thought turned out quite nicely.

I must admit that I tweaked the colors and contrast on this photo a fair bit, deepening the shadows and warming the colour tone a bit. But I got lucky that the camera focused where it did and I like how it turned out.

Oh yeah, and happy Pride for those of you who celebrate it. We're glad to have you in our neighborhood.

More pre-firework madness

There were more fireworks tonight as part of the festival, so when I took Louise out on her evening walk, things were already quite busy. Still, she likes the added activity and had fun interacting with the people who wanted to say hi.

I had my camera with me and have to say, I am much happier with how some of these photos turned out than I have been generally. I'm just a little slow learning how to get the best out of this one, I guess.
For example, in this first shot, if you click on it you will even see the light reflecting off Louise's whiskers. I did reduce the contrast a little because there was so much light behind her and I wanted to draw out the detail in her face. I also dimmed the brightness to compensate for the 'washed out' look that less contrast can give.

This next shot was fun. The poor guy wasn't expecting a dog to come investigate his handiwork (he was smashing mussel shells with a rock.) Once Louise determined that there was nothing edible here she was ready to move on. Other than cropping, I didn't have to do much to this photo.

Just before we started to head back we noticed about six mounted police officers taking advantage of the empty street. (Several streets were blocked off from car traffic several hours before and after the fireworks event.) Louise was really interested in the horses - she is familiar with them from our time up in Vernon, so she was not barking and acting crazy.

This last photo is my attempt at a 'chase camera' angle, where the back of her head is in focus while still capturing the subject in the background. I am actually holding the dog in one arm and holding the camera away from me in the other, shooting 'blind' if you will. I guess the older camera was good practice because I like how this one turned out, especially with the sunlight reflecting in front of the officers.

I've talked a lot about the fireworks. If you are interested in seeing photos I took at the show tonight, you can check out my flickr page. You might find the occasional shot of Louise in there too.

Skateboarding in the office?

As usual today was a work day for Louise. For the first time in a while, it was also raining on the way in, which makes it a little trickier for me as I have to steer a stroller, take the dog on a leash and hold the umbrella all at once.

I am not the most coordinated individual, so it's tougher than it might sound. Especially when Louise starts to bark at traffic.

Not that I can really complain. Louise was pretty good on our walk in. I had the stroller zipped up for a change in an effort to minimize the rain that would get in on her, but really, it is only a mesh covering for about half of it, so it only did so much.

Once in the office, we got settled into our routine of me working and Louise napping or visiting other employees. Eventually we had a rather long meeting that she felt the need to attend but that only lasted for about the first half, at which point she had to go for a stretch. She didn't go far though, as I saw her checking out the receptionist's desk to see if she had any spare broccoli stalks. (In Louise's defense, our receptionist DOES bring broccoli in on Tuesdays because she knows Louise will be in.)

As usual, Greg was in and at one point he brought in an old Tony Hawk skateboard from the late eighties. It didn't take long before we had Louise on the board (it took a couple treats to get her to cooperate) taking a few blurry photos. Turning on the flash helped, but made the room look darker than it was.

The last picture is of Louise on my lap, which is a spot she spent a lot of time in today. We discovered that she has another wart on her paw, this time on the other side and luckily, higher up so she isn't walking on it. But it clearly bothers her as she has started to lick her paw quite a bit and it was inflamed today. The wart is basically in between her toes so I am not sure if it causes her discomfort or not. We will probably get her into the vet this week - the new, reasonably priced vet, not the one that does flowery casts. We haven't talked to the vet yet though, so I'm not going to get ahead of myself.