Princess Lu

The "princess" bed that was donated for the Windy City Canine Rescue's Bark in the Park event exchanged a few hands before it finally ended up in mine.  Lu would like to say "Thank You".  She loves it.

Mini Hike

To make up for the lack of hiking this weekend, I took the girls to the Scenic Dog Park.  It is almost like a hike!  :)  I really miss Popson Park - damn rattlesnakes.

Scenic is steep, hot and has no water for the girls to run in.  Coulee spent the second half of our walk running ahead to find shady patches to lay down in.  It is the only sign of age I've really seen in her.  She can still run forever, but not when she is hot.

Lacey donned her backpack for the walk.  It carries a litre of water and was perfect for our needs.  And besides, she is so darn cute in it!

And it doesn't seem to slow her down much either.

I'm really loving these backpacks.  I've always struggled with carrying water and the camera. In the past it has been one or the other as  really don't want the two things in the same bag, but I really can't carry two bags comfortably. So the packs are perfect.  And the dogs really don't seem to mind them at all.

Have Stick, Will Travel

We spent the weekend camping in the Crowsnest Pass.

I LOVE our trailer.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it.  This was only my second time in it but the first time we had some technical difficulties so we were without lights and water.  But not this time!  It is so nice to be able to sit comfortably at a table in the evening and play cards, or read a book or just chat and have a drink. Sunday it rained pretty much the entire morning but we just had a leisurely morning, quickly packed up and left.  No wet tent to roll up.  No soaking wet clothes to worry about. No breakfast in the rain.  It was wonderful.  Look - a happy, dry Marlin!

I barely took any photos all weekend.  We didn't end up going for a hike as my back has really been bothering me lately, but we did take the girls around the lake at least.  They had fun splashing in the water and of course, fetching a stick.  Coulee is happy no matter where she is as long as there is something to fetch.

We will be heading out again in a week or two.  I can't wait!

Peek!

Ever Watchful

Even while shaking Coulee is aware that the Wubba is temporarily unguarded.

The Forgotten One

Someone got left behind at work today...

I'll give you a hint... His song (created by Jo) starts with "Everybody's friend is..."

Alfie!

I obviously couldn't just leave him there, and I had to get home to my pups who had already been left alone longer than we like, so after waiting 30 minutes for his mom, Alfie and I decided to head home.

  

Where I promptly tortured him with weird and wonderful camera angles.  :)  And he tortured Coulee by hogging all the toys.

As you can tell, we all had a horrible time waiting for his mom to call.  I was kind of hoping she wouldn't, but she did.  ;)  Better luck next time.

Mystery Solved

I recently upgraded my flickr account to the "pro level". i.e. I went from the free option to the $25 a year option. You can only have 200 photos under the free option and after a few years I was finally reaching that limit. One of the benefits of the pro level is that you get to see your stats - what pictures are looked at each day, how people found your pictures, etc.

I had noticed quite a while ago that a picture I took of Coulee last year had way more visits than most. As of today, it has had over 700 views (the one next to it in my stream has had 50 views). I had no idea why. It is nothing special (although I like it), it never made it to Explore, it isn't in any galleries... So why are so many people looking at it?

My Golden Border Collie - 30/52, originally uploaded by wendy74ca.

Well thanks to flickr stats, I now know. Almost every day, some one (some times more than one) types "gold border collie" into Google or Yahoo and comes to look at the picture titled My Golden Border Collie. Weird eh? I wonder why so many people are looking for gold coloured border collies.