So I was out taking Photon for her afternoon walk on Saturday. The afternoon walks been a little less energetic these days and I don’t know why. I heard several suggestions, ranging from the higher temperatures, maturing personality, growth spurt, or that Laura is wiping her out completely on her morning walks. (The first one is true: we are living by Cathy L’s motto that the only good puppy is a tired puppy.)

So there we are, in the leash-free Riverdale West Park, with other dog owners saying nice things about Photon, when suddenly one says, “Hey look there’s another one!”

I wandered over towards another little merle streaking down the hill, same size as Photon, and long story short, it’s Photon’s sister Cobalt (née Jolly, the little puppy who clucked like a chicken).

After that, pity the other dogs that wanted to join the fun! Once the two sisters got going, they ran and wrestled each other to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. Admittedly once, on break, they did a tag team of trying to herd a family in the park, but otherwise they were pretty darn focused on each other.

Her owner James has already blogged what happened next, blood and all, so I’ll send you over to his blog to get the skinny, and some gorgeous post-action photos of Cobalt with Photon’s blood on her.

Next time, we’re going to bring cameras to record the action!!

Time for our weekly/monthly/whenever-we-feel-like-it puppy pics! Not as “awwwwww”-inspiring as when she was a widdle teeny-tiny ball o’ fluff, but she still does cute things!

Here she is snoozing in her favourite place—under the living-room comfy chair. I don’t imagine she’ll be able to squeeze under it much longer—it’s already a pretty tight fit.

Yesterday, on the first really warm day of the year (almost 20°C in our micro-climate back yard) we emptied out a Rubbermaid container, put a couple of inches of water in it, and stood back and watched to see what she’d do. Wary at first, it didn’t take her long to step in and start happily splashing around in it. Today is predicted to be even warmer, so we’ll fill it up a few inches higher and let her have a go at it. Yay, we’ve got a water dog!

This photo’s a few weeks old. She’s bigger now. But still cute.
After three weeks of being able to take Photon out into the big, wide world for walks, we can certainly say: She certainly likes it! So much so that she’s constantly whining to go out. I’ll have to do some more training with her to exercise her mind; I’ve been slacking off lately. (Actually, work’s been kind of crazy for the last few weeks, and the rest of the time we’re looking after Jon. Poor Photon.)

An interesting thing about walking Photon: She always attracts a lot of attention. I said to Peter, only half jokingly, that it’s like walking with a supermodel. People actually notice her from across the street, point and exclaim, “She’s gorgeous!”. A lot of it is just because she’s a cute puppy (and presumably it will stop once she grows up). Some attention is because of her unusual colour/spots. And if people actually recognize her breed, they’re amazed by how small she is (mini aussies are definitely not a common sight).

The last day of snow was Sunday, and we headed over to Patti, David, Meghan and Austin’s to watch the dogs run around as spring temperatures finally went positive.