My poor, neglected blog

It's been over a month without any activity on my blog. Sigh.

In the past month...

1. I felt proud to be an American. I think part of the reason I have not been writing much (or even reading other blogs) is that after the election I felt a huge sense of relief. Before the election, I felt like I had to know everything I could about the world of politics on a daily basis because some new horrible thing might be happening. Beginning on January 20, adults will be back in the White House.
   
   Four years ago, when we re-elected a president who we knew authorized torture, I think I was depressed for weeks. I could not believe what we had done. It only took a couple of years for the American public to really understand what kind of president Bush has been, but the reasons his approval ratings have been at record lows were all evident four years ago. Obama has a lot of crap to undo.
   
   
2. The National Bureau of Economic Research officially announced that we have been in a recession.
   
   
3. I have tried to buy a house. At the moment, it looks like I need to start over.
   
   
4. I bought a new camera. My old one ended up getting something stuck inside the lens, so there was a mark on the right side of every picture. You can see an example below.
   
   I looked into getting the camera repaired, but it would have cost about $200 just for the shop to open it up and clean it. Not only would there be no guarantee that the $200 would actually fix the problem, but it could take up to 8 weeks for me to get the camera back. That would be cutting it too close to my trip to Hong Kong, so I bit the bullet and got a SLR. I hope to have lots of practice with it before my trip. Here's an action shot of the puppy from my first practice session.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. I've been making dinner every Sunday night at my church this fall. It's been a great experience. I'll be writing more about these dinners in the future.
   
   
6. It's Advent! My favorite time of year music-wise has arrived. I rarely listen to classical music, but that changes in December. Today we did Lessons & Carols at church, which included some pretty tough pieces. I have not participated in Christmas Eve services at my church before, but based on the music we are preparing, it should be amazing.
   

Boot Camp

The weekend before last, I took Leo to the Stoll Park dog park. It took him about 30 minutes to find the 8-inch deep mudpit in the wooded area of the park. This was mud that was full of decaying organic matter. He was a disgusting mess.

Yesterday, it took him about 5 minutes to find the same mudpit. Since he loves to include any person he can find in the best game in the entire world (throwing a tennis ball for Leo to fetch) I needed to put him on the leash immediately or every person at the park would have also been covered in mud. I was meeting a friend there so that our dogs could play together. While all the other dogs got to frolic and sniff each other to their hearts content, Leo had to stay within the 20 feet radius of me afforded by his retractable leash.

This picture was taken a few years ago in Washington, but it gives you an idea of what Leo looked like each of the past two weekends!

This morning I took him to the dog park at Shawnee Mission Park so that he could swim in the lake. He did not get muddy, but his behavior was disappointing. After only throwing the ball into the water twice, he decided to swim along the shore, picking up other dogs' tennis balls until he ended up about 20 yards beyond the dog park boundary. He was standing on the shore, surrounded by about 5 tennis balls, wagging his tail, wondering why I didn't climb over the brush (or go for a swim myself) to get to him and continue our game.

He finally came back over to me (only bringing 3 of the tennis balls - fortunately dog parks are full of stray tennis balls. The victims of his theft had plenty of other balls with which to play) I let him swim for a couple more minutes, but the next time he made a move to swim away from me, I decided it was time to go home.

I picked up some training size dog treats this afternoon, so doggie boot camp will begin tonight. Leo does enjoy working on his commands (come, down, heel, stay, go to bed, etc.) He has trouble staying in the "sit" position for more than 4 or 5 seconds because of the arthritis in his knees, but when he is "down" he can "stay" just fine. I hope that a couple of weeks of two-a-days will get him back to more polite behavior when we visit the dog parks.

I know that this is my fault. I ought to have him practice his commands a few times a week to keep them fresh in his mind. After boot camp is over, I'll need to be sure that we don't slack off again.

Metabolism

Leo needed to go to the vet today for updating vaccines and to get him on Frontline for ticks. (On Sunday I found two ticks on him even though he had only been in the backyard or on walks in the neighborhood recently - I'll spare you the photos of those nasty things)

I talked to the vet about how he has gained some weight over the past 6 weeks or so. She said that since he is about 4 and 1/2 years old, his metabolism is probably starting to slow down, just like what happens with us when we hit our 30's. She wasn't worried about his weight, but didn't want him to gain any more. So, since he's been getting a decent amount of exercise since the weather has warmed up, it's less food for Leo. Sorry guy, I guess you know how I feel.

A day at the Park

The Pacific Northwest has an extremely dog-friendly culture. I imagine it's just an urban legend, but I've heard a number of different people say that the city of Seattle has a larger population of dogs than of children. One of things that I loved about visiting either Seattle or Portland was the large number of dog parks. Some were huge, like the one at Magnuson Park in Seattle where the picture on the left was taken, but a lot of them were in small sections of neighborhood parks.

Kansas City has a long way to go before being as dog-friendly as Seattle. There are a couple of large dog parks a long way out in the suburbs. Before I found a job, I took Leo out to Heritage Park and to Shawnee Mission Park quite a bit. He could swim at both places, but because there are so few other parks, they both are usually crowded. That's probably fine for most dogs, but Leo doesn't like to play with other dogs if there is a tennis ball around. He gets along with other dogs just fine, but doesn't think they are nearly as much fun as a human throwing a ball for him.

Today we went to Penn Valley Park, which is right next to the World War One Memorial. From the Memorial, there is a great view of downtown. By the way, I knew John McCain was going to be in town today, but did not know that part of his itinerary was taking a tour of the Memorial. A CNN camera crew was the only evidence that he had been there earlier in the day.


The dog park at Penn Valley is fine. There is not any place to swim, but it does have both large open areas and shady areas with a couple of picnic tables. Dog owners in Kansas City don't do a great job of cleaning up after their dogs, but today the park was in much better shape than it was the last time we visited.

There was a couple at the park today with their pair of bull terriers. They (the terriers, not the couple) had a great time chasing Leo, who was chasing his tennis ball. He is still not in very good shape, judging by the number and length of the breaks Leo took, but he's getting there. You can see all of the pictures from the park on flickr. But I think the picture below from when we got home shows that it was a successful trip!