As this is the first update since Christmas, it includes stuff dating all the way back to January. To segue nicely from Christmas, here's what Murphy's favourite activity has been since Christmas:

Yes, it's the rollaball again. He's obsessed with it. He now carries it around like a stuffie. He carried the rollaball up onto my bed himself, which requires a bit of a stretch:

That's him sniffing under the fridge for any wayward kibbles that fell out of the rollaball and then got wedged under the furniture/appliances. He does a whole circuit of the condo, checking under the fridge, stove, couch, bookshelves and any closed doors. He has one hell of a nose, being able to sniff out kibbles stuck several feet back behind obstacles.

Back sometime in the winter, I took a couple of funny photos, but I can't remember what exactly was going on in them:

 

He's clearly afraid of something, but it must have been trivial as I chose to take pictures of him rather than comfort him.

Now skipping ahead to May we have the annual parade for Lynn Valley Days. You may remember last year's parade, which my brother in law Jason was lucky enough to attended with me and Murph. Well this year I knew it was coming, so I made sure Murphy and I were all set. It goes right by our front gate:

Murphy had to go investigate what was going on with all these people wandering by. He wasn't a big fan of the noisy kids on their noisy bikes, and barked at one of them:

I took the picture just before the little girl went by.She thought it was funny that Murphy was barking at her, and laughed and laughed, which annoyed me slightly.

Then we took some time to play. Murphy wanted Patches to join in on the action:

What fantastic grass I have! So much for that thrice weekly watering last summer! Anyway, we played some fetch with Patches, but Murphy quickly had enough, and had himself a rest:

Taking pictures while having to hang on to Murphy was a bit of a challenge, but I managed to take several. One of my favourites was taken from Murphy's perspective, showing how the parade must have looked to him:

People came from all over the neighbourhood with their folding chairs to catch the parade. Murphy, it turns out, is not a fan of drums, and started barking as the pipe band went by, so we backed up from the sidewalk and sat with our backs to our gate to watch.

The photo to your left sort of shows how we were tucked away in the indent in the wall that fronts the fence and gate to our yard. That's the parade coming from behind Murphy. He was much calmer once we were more than 2 feet from the action. Plus we got away from this annoying family that found it hysterically funny how Murphy would jump every time there was a loud bang. Actually, it wasn't even the kids who were the problem, it was the mother! The kids were sweet, asking to touch Murphy (they fed him a treat) but the mother was a pain in the ass.

At any rate the parade was much like last year's with marching bands, clowns, dancers, cheerleaders, preschoolers on tricycles, kids on bikes, and local community groups like churches and senior's groups. I took photos of a few of them:

So that was the Lynn Valley Days Parade! Murphy enjoyed hanging out with the neighbours, but was upset that he didn't get to eat any of the candy or gum the people in the parade were throwing at all of us.

Other than the parade, we haven't done any too exciting this spring. We've gone on a couple hikes in Lynn Headwaters with new/old friends.

The first one was with Carrie Ann, a new coworker of mine. She's thinking about moving to the North Shore, so Murphy and I had her over for a day for a hike on the Cedar Mills Trail in Lynn Canyon. Luckily Carrie Ann brought her camera, as I didn't, and she took some photos of Murphy for me.

And when she heard that Murphy has a backpack she had to have Murphy model it. And like a good little model he struck a pose for the camera.

Before we left I posed for one picture myself:

So Murphy wore the backpack for the whole hike, carrying his own water bowl, pick up bags etc. We hiked for about 3 hours, occasionally stopping for a water break:

When we got home I had to wash what seemed to be 3/4 of the underbrush from the forest out of Murphy's coat. He was so matted from the combination of dirt, water, and rubbing from the backpack that after I bathed him I ended up taking scissors to him and cutting away a ton of his fur. You can check out his shorter hair in the photos that follow.

A couple of weeks later we went for another hike, this time with Yoko and her dog Wonton. Yoko is actually an old friend of mine, who I found on the addiction that is Facebook. She and I used to dance together back in the 1980's. A couple weeks ago we met up, along with Wendy (again, I originally know Wendy from dancing school) for dinner, and Yoko and I decided we should take our dogs out together.

To your left is Murphy at the main starting point for hikes in Lynn Headwaters. Note he's wearing his bear bell to ward off predators. It's undoubtedly useless as a deterrent to bears, probably signaling to them a nice little snack instead. But it's great for me, as I can follow the sound when Murphy disappears into the bush. In the distance you can see the bridge that goes over Lynn Creek and leads to the trails. It's called a creek but it's several feet deep and has sort of mini rapids right around this area, so I've kept Murphy on leash here. Also, there are bold fluorescent yellow signs all over this area telling you to do so.

At any rate, we met up with Yoko and Wonton - that's him to your right, how cute is he? - and headed over the bridge to the Lynn Loop Trail. I was worried that Murphy and Wonton might not get along, as Murphy has been skittish ever since a bad day at the park several months ago when a couple of different dogs pounced on him. But there were no problems at all! Wonton seems to have a very steady personality, and just sort of ignored Murphy at first, which was just what Murphy needed. Murphy kept sniffing at Wonton, which didn't bother the smaller dog one bit.

So the dogs ran back and forth, covering at least twice the area Yoko and I did. Murphy had to bathe in all the puddles, but refused to clean off in the clear, running water. Luckily for Yoko Wonton seems to have much better sense, although because he's so little his belly ended up completely black by the end of the hike. You can see in the picture above how dirty his little paws got. He was moving so fast it was hard to get a picture of him, but here's another one of Wonton, running back and forth on the trail:

He ran up and down that trail several times before I was able to capture him on film. Murphy was even further ahead at this point. Below we have the dogs breaking the rules and running off the trail:

Ok, in that one it's Wonton off the trail with Murphy on the boardwalk that crossed over a little creek, but believe me Murphy was off in the bush just as much as Wonton. Look at how dirty Murphy was! Yoko was horrified by his insistence on swimming and drinking from every puddle and ditch we came across. Frankly, I'm used to it.

So that was our hike! We didn't get off the trail til nearly 9pm, so we both headed straight home to bathe the dogs. And it was so much easier with the shorter hair. I think I'm going to keep him short during the summers from now on.

That's it for Spring! Next up will be Murphy's birthday in July.

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: Summer 2007
Here's the link to the previous update: Christmas 2006

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