A Quick Dip

Apparently this little fellow doesn't mind that the pool is only in the low 50's! He came by yesterday for a quick dip, as he has on and off for the last couple of months. Hubby says that's a heck of an expensive bird bath we've got out there!

Surrounded

Every once in a while I have the strangest sensation of being surrounded by dogs. I can't imagine why I get that feeling...
Can't a girl have a quiet phone conversation?

"Healing Paws"

Kona and I, along with some of our wonderful therapy team friends, Tom & Wilson, and Kelli & Bella took part in a segment a local news station was doing on therapy dogs. The station is doing a series on "Healing Paws" and we were part three of the five part series. Other segments revolve around service dogs, facility dogs, and other types of animals that help people in our community.

If you are interested in seeing the other parts of this series, please visit www.kusi.com and search "Healing Paws" in their search bar.

Needless to say, once again, I was very proud of my boy.

One of THOSE days...

Have you ever had one of those days...you know the days when it just seems that nothing much goes right? That's how my day was...

It started off good enough, with me picking up Bear and heading to the Wild Animal Park to join my Photography group for a meetup. All was well until I opened up my camera bag, and realized that I'd FORGOTTEN TO PUT MY CAMERA IN IT! Good Lord, if my head wasn't screwed on, I'm pretty sure I'd forget that half the time.

Getting old sucks...between that, and having way too much going on sometimes, I should have just called it a day, come home, and went back to bed. Oh well...lesson learned.

Thankfully, I did have my little Sony Cybershot with me, so I got a couple of pictures but nothing like what I was hoping for. Bear let me borrow her camera and I snapped off a couple nice shots of a gorgeous male lion (much better than the one picture I'm going to share here) but in typical fashion for the day, I forgot to get the pictures off of the memory card before she headed home today.

Throw in a whole bunch of other garbage that happened today, and like I said, I should have just stayed in bed.

C'est la vie...such is life sometimes, such is life.

This grumpy looking fella has nothing on me today...

I'd like to be tearing something up too...

I know how ya feel brother....

Thongs

I was having a conversation this morning with a friend about a gold lamé thong I was thinking of buying for him (silly, inside joke - sorry) and then I came across this. I just had to post it for him.

Enjoy - my love, you know who you are. (And, folks, it's cool, cause Hubby does too.)

Back in time

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were gone in the blink of an eye! With my Mom out of town visiting my brother and his family in Texas, my calendar full with therapy visits and gold parties, and spending time with my Dad. I feel like I went to bed Friday night, closed my eyes for a second and woke up this morning with the 3 day weekend gone!

Whew! Where did it all go? Let's see... If I could go back in time, I would show you the Canine Cancer Walk that my Golden Retriever Meetup Group participated it. It had been raining all week up until Saturday morning, when the walk took place. I had helped to organize the team, and rally the troops, but because of prior commitments, I couldn't actually do the walk myself - I made a donation and participated as a "virtual" walker instead. I was tickled to see so many of our members did show up though, and our team raised an incredible $3440. Thank you to all of you who donated - Golden owners or not, you all have golden hearts. (xoxo to you Doug!)

Our Saturday was filled with work, fun with Dad, and some quality family and dog time. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned that my Pops is a card shark, but let me tell you, he plays a mean game of cribbage, spades, and Up the River-Down the River, to name a few. We had a fun evening and a lot of laughs.

Sunday was twice as busy as Saturday. I had a HUGE party that I worked, my biggest one ever, and it was awesome. From that party I went straight to another one, and in between them I was bidding on an ebay item I wanted for Halloween. The item closed at 6pm, so while I was working my second party, I had Hubby checking my bids, and sure enough, I won it. YAY! It was a large item that will be super cool for our party. I am so excited that I had the winning bid! I got a kick-butt deal on it too. The only thing about it is that the item was too large to ship, so we needed to go and pick it up. It was located in West Covina, about 110 miles north.

So...guess what we did yesterday! Thank goodness Hubby was off for the President's Day holiday. I got ahold of the seller, found out what time he was available for us to come by his house, plugged his address into the GPS, and off we went. What a fun little adventure. We got to the gentleman's very swank house, and waited for him to get there. (We were a few minutes early.) Once he got there, he welcomed us in, and I drooled looked around a bit, while he got our item. It was exactly what I wanted, and looked even cooler in real life than in the pictures. I'd already paid for it via paypal, so I didn't have to worry about that, so we chatted for a minute and I told him what we would be using it for. He got a kick out of our idea, and then told me about a couple of other items he had that we might be interested in. He showed us the other items, and OF COURSE I was interested, he had awesome stuff, and exactly the kind of items I've been searching for. Then I got nervous curious about the prices...I mean seriously, these were some really nice things. Big, heavy stuff, almost like you'd find in a museum. He pointed to the first one, and he said, "If you like that, I'll give it to you for $10." WOW! Needless to say, I bought all of the other items he showed me, and I felt almost like I'd hit the lotto. SWEEEET! What a great way to really kick off my Halloween prop hunting.

As you know, the theme of my party this year will revolve around Egypt. (I picked the theme long before the revolt, and all of the problems they've been having over there.) I don't want to give out too many of my secrets, but I'll share just a few little tidbits of my newly found treasures.
The pups are none too happy about our new residents. Jill-trying to protect the world - or so she thinks!

Cuddling

It was a cold, rainy, rotten day.

The perfect day to cuddle-just ask the pups!

Kibble Nibble? Yup!

With the weekend promising to be a very wet one, I headed to the pet store looking for a little something different to entertain the pups. I went to Muttropolis, where my friend Lisa works. She suggested something called a "Kibble Nibble."

A what?

A Kibble Nibble. It's an egged shaped thingy that is hollow that you put small pieces of kibble in (or whatever you want), and the dogs have to push it around and try to figure out how to get the treats out. I have purchased a similar thing in the past, but it was a lot smaller, and not see-through and the pups lost interest quickly.
Not this time! They have been getting a major kick out of it! The funniest thing is that Kona seems to be the one rolling it around all over the floor, and the other dogs just follow him around, waiting for the goodies to come out. It's a riot.

I know the video is pretty bad quality, but I was getting such a kick out of watching them play that I forgot to turn the lights on!

Flop

What the heck? In the last week I've made two attempts at making this cake.

Two.

Both times the cake has come out looking like this. A cow patty.

Now granted, the cake tastes AWESOME, and I know, in the long run, that's what really matters. But seriously, what the heck am I doing wrong?

I am using a recipe that only has four ingredients. Butter, sugar, eggs and semisweet cocoa. It's a flour-less chocolate cake and I know it's actually supposed to rise and fall, but my issue is that the silly thing doesn't want to come out of the cake pan for anything! It splits in the middle and comes apart like a darn hamburger bun. UGH! I greased the heck out of the pan, and even used a brand new non-stick pan. Both times I had to scrap the thing out of the pan and mold it together.

Anyone have any suggestions on what I am doing wrong? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Canine Cancer Walk Coverage!

This coming Saturday my Golden group will be participating in the first annual San Diego Canine Cancer Cure Walk. We have our own walking team, and so far have raised just about a thousand dollars benefiting Morris Animal Foundation's Canine Cancer Campaign. (Did you know that one out of four dogs over the age of two pass away due to cancer?)

This morning we were invited to take part in some live news segments being shot for a local station. Not wanting to have to bathe all 4 dogs by myself (which I wound up doing later anyway) I only brought Kona. Four dogs on the beach by myself at 7:30am was just a little more than I was willing to try to handle this morning. I put the word out to the group, and we had over 20 Goldens in attendance. What a great showing! We got lots of coverage on the news, and it was all for a very worthy cause. Kona had a blast running and playing with the other dogs, and the cold water didn't seem to bother him at all.

Here is a compilation of all of the segments from the hour that we were out there. Kona was really hamming it up for a minute - from the 6:35 mark to about 7:20. That's my boy!

Big thanks to Chopper the Biker Dog and his Dad Mark for letting us share their YouTube video.


Once all of the video taping was done, Kona got what he'd been waiting for - more time to play!

If you'd like to support the San Diego Golden Retriever Meetup Group Walk Team in our efforts to raise money to help end Canine Cancer, please feel free to make a donation by following this link. S.D. Golden Retriever Meetup Walk Team

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hey Pups, over here....let's get a nice little Valentine's Day picture...

Harley, yes, I know the sun feels good...but stop soaking it up, just for a sec...Jack, am I boring you?
Kona? Are you awake buddy? Hello?
There we go, that's better. (Notice that Jill's expression never changed? She's mad it me for telling her to stop barking. Miss Mouthy has been at it ALL morning!)
No, Kona, we aren't quite done..gimme just a minute.

Ok, that's about as good as it gets.

We hope you have a Valentine's Day that's as good as it can be, surrounded by the people you love.

Viva Las Vegas!

What a blast today has been! We got into town right around 1pm, spent some time with our dear friends Shirley and Ed at their beautiful home here, and then the four of us hit the town.

We started off at the Luxor to do some research for our Halloween party. Norm enjoyed checking things out with us and of course enjoyed a cold beverage or two.









We did a little gambling here and there and I am pleased to say I did quite well! We wound up walking nearly 5 miles this evening (and into the morning-it's nearly 2am!) We also met up with my boss who happened to be in town with his wife for the weekend. We had a drink and chatted for a little while and then I proceeded to win $260.00 from a penny machine. Sweet!

More soon! Good night/morning!

Hitting the Road!

It's not often that Hubby and I get the chance to be spontaneous. Fortunately though, today IS one of those days. We have a very rare weekend where we have no big plans on the calendar - neither of us has work obligations, and I don't have any therapy visits scheduled with Kona.

I've been itching for a little change of scenery, and I am SO lucky that Hubby is such a good sport, having just gotten home from a week long business trip.

So, we threw a couple of things into a bag this morning, grabbed our travel buddy, Norm, and hit the road.

I'll check in soon to let you know where we wind up!

I'm Itching...

...for a change of scenery that is.

I think it's time for a little impromptu

Stay tuned!

Pictures-a-Plenty

With Hubby out of town this week (he returned safely this evening from Sioux Falls, South Dakota-burr!) I took as many opportunities not only to not cook, but to get out as often as I could with my camera. I took nearly a thousand pictures over the last four days mainly at the zoo and La Jolla Shores.

Although I may not be very proud of most of them, these are a few that I was pretty happy with, that I didn't already post this week. (My favorites from La Jolla Shores were posted earlier this week.)

Kona's Shoe Fetish

Kona has a shoe fetish. I've known it for a long, long time. He collects them from the far ends of the house, carries them around, snuggles with them at nap time, but never, ever chews or damages them in any way.

I believe he prefers my shoes, but when I've been careful and put mine away in the closed closet, he will settle for any one's. He's even been known to go "shoe shopping" - meaning he'll scoot my closet door open with his nose and see what he can get off my shoe shelf.

He is a goofy, goofy dog. And I love him, and all of my pups so much.