EMPS: The Geese on Barnum Hill

This week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot was called "A Walk in he Park." The weather has finally cooled enough, and the dogs' shots are current enough, that I was able to take them to Reid Park for the first time in many months. The tricky part was finding the time. Then my Thursday afternoon computer lesson (teaching, not taking) was postponed, so off we went!



After some fun in the dog park area...



...we headed off for a stroll...



...down by the duck ponds.



The geese at the left of the photo here are coming down from an area called Barnum Hill. They acted as if they ran the place. Cayenne was desperate to show them otherwise, and I had to hold the leashes tight to keep her from getting away as she lunged toward them.



The geese headed down to the second duck pond...



...where a cormorant was already hanging out.

Karen

F&FFF: The Dogs in the Daytime

For Feline and Furballs with Feathers Friday:

Pepper's pre-grooming shedding and post-grooming sleekness
(and bandanna!)

From Reid at Random

As I mentioned in my previous entry, Pepper was groomed this week. She had been shedding clumps of black fur all over the place; more important, all that fur can't have been comfortable for her in all this 100-degree-plus heat. So I took her to PetSmart on Tuesday for the "Furminator" treatment. Most of her undercoat is gone, her coat is soft and shiny, and she has hardly been shedding at all. She also acquired a bandanna that actually looked semi-decent, before shedding it in the back yard.

It was suggested to me the other day that the problem of taking the dogs out in the Arizona heat might be solved by taking them out early in the morning. I try never to be conscious that time of day, if I can help it; but nevertheless I tried it on Thursday morning.

By 8 AM(?) we were at Miko's Corner. Even at that time, things were heating up. Most of the humans were congregated at the picnic tables under the ramada roof. Even the dogs tended to be in the shade, and did very little running around. All in all, it was no improvement.

There was a definite advantage, though, when we left the dog park itself for the wider romping grounds of Reid Park. The dogs and I finally got to see the critters that have dug so many holes in the ground outside the rose garden. I had thoughts of gophers, or possibly something even more exotic, but the truth was more prosaic. The morning shift at Reid Park featured lots and lots of rock squirrels, the Arizona equivalent of the common gray squirrel. They were popping in and out of holes, some of them freshly dug, peeping and peering warily at the dogs.

And the dogs were peering right back, making noises of their own! I have never felt them tug on the leashes quite this hard. But no, I didn't let go!

One year as a Blocher dog.

**Update: after posting this I went to Steven's newest F and FF entry, and learned that his beloved cat Pickle will probably be put to sleep on Monday at the end of a long illness. Let me take this opportunity to extend my sympathies to Steven in this difficult time. Exactly a year ago, we took our dog Tuffy Toro to the vet for the last time, and felt the gamut of guilt and grief and relief as her evident suffering came to an end. The next day, we adopted a dog called "Ireland," who was soon renamed Cayenne - not a replacement, but a new friend. Tuffy and Cayenne are very different dogs. This isn't necessarily the right answer for everyone who loses a pet, but for us it was. **

Karen

EMPS: Patterns, Pups and the Park

For the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #47: Patterns, Carly is encouraging us to look beyond the obvious in photographically parsing the concept of patterns. Hey, I can do that! But it's taken me all week to get past the first two sentences of this entry. Sorry about that - I've been distracted with my unemployment claim situation, church stuff and 1960s episodes of Doctor Who. Onward! I've got visual patterns for you, and also metaphorical ones.

From Miko's Corner

During this summer's hot and humid but fairly rain-deprived Arizona monsoon, a pattern has emerged in my outings with the dogs. It used to be that we went to Miko's Corner Playground at Reid Park every single day around 5 PM - and then around 6 PM, and then around 7 PM when Rachel Maddow's show was over on MSNBC. But lately we've been going at or just after sunset, around 7:30 PM, when we go at all. On the other days, at about that same time, I take them up and down the block and probably down the alleyway, depending on the weather, and whether I think it will be full dark before we cover the half mile of alley.

Lots of dogs and their owners are in the park after dark.

This isn't just because I want to watch Keith and Rachel before going, and feed John, who comes home starving from work. It's mostly about the weather. Even a short stroll in hundred degree heat (or worse) isn't pleasant for me. More important, it can't be comfortable or even safe for Pepper with her long black fur, suitable for insulation as she herds reindeer through the snow as her ancestors did. So we wait until dusk, when the temperature falls into the nineties or even eighties.

A belated rainbow - a pattern of colors!

If we're lucky, the wind picks up as a storm comes in, because that's part of the pattern of the monsoon. The sky tends to cloud up in the late afternoon, and the rain, if it comes, gets here in the early evening. If it actually rains when it's time to walk the dogs, they miss out completely. But that hasn't happened nearly enough. We're just not getting the rain this year.

A typical sunset weather pattern - clouds building up and distant rain.

A pattern of shadows from a tree near one of the park's few lights.

Be sure to check Carly's blog Ellipsis every Monday for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot! And if you like writing prompts, you can find John Scalzi's other old meme, the Weekend Assignment, right here at the Outpost every Friday. Be there! Aloha!

Karen

Update: Carly asks about the shading /tint on the top two photos. I wish I could claim artistic credit, but basically I went with what was already there. Aside from my brightening the highlights and midtones, that's how the park photos came out of the camera. The park's lamps all cast a yellow light, which the camera picks up more strongly than the human eye. But even in person, the lights are noticeably yellow!

Duck!

The day started badly.

I had been up most of the night doing CPAexcel units on the subject of bankruptcy law, a somewhat depressing subject even if you have a good job and manageable debts. Obviously, I'm still working on the "good job" part. The units were due at midnight, but the computer-based grading system doesn't really care if you complete the assignment a little late. Just click a button that says "regrade" and all is copacetic. Even so, I didn't want to fall even further behind. I wanted to finish the entire section, but around 5 AM excessive sleepiness put an end ot that plan.

It would have been nice to sleep in a bit, but I awoke just after 10 AM and got up. I have an interview Thirsday morning for a part time bookkeeper/ accountant job at St. Michael's, for pay this time; and I needed to turn in the job application today. It was a PDF file, which I filled in by hand yesterday. My handwriting can at best be referred to as "somewhat readable," so John and I between us spent a few hours over the last day and a half trying to find a way to add my answers to the file as printed text. Saving each page as a jpg wasn't the most practical approach (or maybe it was), so John opened it in real Acrobat and tried to make it a fillable form. That would have been ideal, had it worked; but it didn't.

When I went to download the emailed edit of the file, I came across an ominous-looking email from the state unemployment service, something about my unemployment claim for last week. Uh-oh! Now what? When I tried to open the email, nothing happened. That's when the internet connection went down, completely and convincingly.

I spent the next hour booting John's computer, checking the modem, the router and various cables, and then playing with the job application file to see if I could find a way to add my data. No luck with any of it. I could add little comment boxes with red text, but that would do me no good.

Deprived of the internet, short of sleep, stymied by a program I should have been able to conquer, and even without a manila envelope in which to put the form as requested, I was not a happy camper. The unread email from the state almost certainly meant bad news, and I was annoyed that I'd have to turn in a messy, handwritten job application, undercutting my reputation at St. Michael's as a computer whiz. My pending job interview was starting to stress me out a little.

But I showered and dressed, put the application in the wrong kind of envelope and headed for a Hallmark shop and office supply store near the church. They had onesies for sale of manila envelopes in a variety of sizes, which I found within about a minute of an employee's friendly greeting at the door. As I went to pay for my envelope, I saw this little guy sitting near the register, waiting for a buyer:

Yeah, I know. I already have two rubber ducks. But he was very cute, and on sale for just fifty cents, and he's slightly shorter in length than my little finger. Besides, he can do this:

Can you see? He's got flashing red lights inside! I've named him Fester.

My brief visit to Plunkett's, with the friendly staff, the inexpensive envelope and the unexpected whimsy of a light-up rubber duck, marked the exact moment my day turned around completely. I dropped off my application in the right kind of envelope, and realized that nobody else cared that my info was handwritten. Furthermore, a St. Michael's volunteer told me that her Cox internet connection had also been down that morning, but had since come back up. I could stop worrying about equipment failure at my end of things, or prolonged internet deprivation.

When I got home, I opened the email from the state, and it was no big deal. Suddenly, after all these months, some human, computer or combination thereof has decided that it's a good idea to remind people to file their claim for the previous week if they don't jump on the task by 6 PM Monday, and warn them they'll be dropped unless they file by Friday. I filed on Tuesday and the system knows it. Everything is fine.

This afternoon I was at church again, doing the volunteer stuff, and early this evening the dogs and I went to the dog park as usual. I have to admit that after eight months, I'm getting a little bored with the place, and even the dogs are not enjoying the dog park itself as much as they used to. I took them around other areas of Reid Park, getting some exercise, amusing the dogs with interesting smells, and trying to prove to Pepper that the ferret she smelled at the concert was long gone. She should not expect to find ferrets in Reid Park. Yeah, sure - except tonight there was a couple near the performance center with a ferret on a leash! Fortunately I didn't let the dogs close enough to even know it was there. Ferrets! All in all, I prefer ducks. And so, of course, does Cayenne.

Karen

IOU 1 Blog Entry

For the first time in several years, I let a day go by with no blog entry. I don't know whether to be aghast as this breach in my self-imposed routine and pseudo-responsibilities, or pleased that I put seven hours of sleep ahead of a "nap" and my usual OCD-like obsession with blogging daily no matter what. In case anyone was worried about where I was, here is an explanation of sorts, along with some vignettes of news, some of which I alluded to in prior entries.

As you know, Batman, I was very busy Thursday through Sunday with Holy Week and Easter. I served at the Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening services, all of which were over two hours long, I think. I got to read the Exodus passage about the parting of the Red Sea at the Saturday evening Easter Vigil Mass, which vies with the pre-midnight Christmas Mass as the longest of the year. It was tricky carrying either a torch (which is to say, an oil-filled candle on a stick) or crucifix solemnly through the church, process to the labyrinth for a number of baptisms, and stand or kneel before the altar at the appropriate times, AND document all those services photographically without being crass or inappropriate. I didn't really get all the pictures I wanted, but I think I struck a reasonable balance, and nobody seemed to mind my getting out the camera from time to time. In fact, a number of parishioners seemed rather amused by it.

Nevertheless I felt a little out of sorts by the end of Easter Vigil, feeling I hadn't quite managed to do everything adequately. The day had started with my missing Father Smith when I tried to go to confession, and more or less ended with my discovery that I'd gone all through Mass with the snap at the collar of my alb unfastened. There were also a few moments during the Mass when I guessed incorrectly where to stand and when. There's a certain improvisational spirit to some of the ritual at times, when Father Smith or Proscovia wants to do something special at a particular service; they issue instructions but they're not always fully detailed, or I don't always fully understand them. But I do my best, and try to keep the younger acolytes on task as well.

From Lent at St. Michael's 2009

One cool thing about the Vigil, though. It had been raining off and on since 2 AM the previous night. I wasn't even able to take the dogs to the dog park before church because of the rain. Father Smith reported later that people had asked him all day what was going to happen if it rained that evening. Easter Vigil starts outside with the lighting of a small fire from which the Paschal candle is lit. Halfway through the Mass, there's also a baptism, this year involving I think six or seven baptismal candidates, both children and adults. They are baptized outside in the baptismal pool, a little jacuzzi-like pool recessed beneath the center of the church's labyrinth, and covered up the rest of the year. Would we all be standing in the rain at Easter Vigil, trying to keep our candles lit? That's what everyone wanted to know. But the rain stopped for the bit at the beginning of Mass, and again just before we went outside for the baptisms. Within a couple of minutes after coming back inside after the baptisms, we could hear rain pounding on the church roof.

Sunday morning I left the house early to pick up a tank of gas, Kevin and Eva, in that (chronological) order. Eva, who will be 104 years old in May, had misremembered her 9:30 AM pick up time (for the 10:15 AM Mass) as 7:30 AM, and had waited outside for us for some time. Standing around in a parking lot is rather taxing when you're 103, and normally alternate between a cane and a wheelchair. Fortunately, an attendant brought out a chair for her to sit on after a while.

By the time we arrived, she had long since given up on us and was inside playing solitaire. I got to re-learn how to fold a wheelchair as we got her to Mass. Everyone was delighted to see her (she hadn't been to our church since Christmas), and she even made a few new friends. So did I. There was a guy at our table at coffee hour, first name Wright. The eldest of the newly-baptized folks from Easter Vigil was chatting with Eva, and set a small bag of assorted Easter candy on the table for the rest of us to devour. Wright, Mary, Kevin and I got quite silly as we grabbed the malt ball eggs and chocolate eggs, jelly beans, and candy bunnies and chickies.

Back at Eva's independent living apartment at a local senior facility, we chatted and I gave her a metal bookcase I've had since college. It had been in the trunk of my car since January, at least. Kevin had wanted to go to The Good Egg to treat himself to Easter brunch, since his father is awaiting triple bypass surgery (which will be at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix) and is obviously not well enough to go out for holiday meals. By the time we left Eva's, though, the restaurant was half an hour from their afternoon closing time. We ended up at Bruegger's Bagels, where my "Easter brunch" consisted of an everything bagel with ham, egg and cream cheese. It was good, too.

It was at about this time that I realized I'd left my red jacket hanging up in the sacristy, the sort of dressing room/supply room for clergy and acolytes. The church was long-since locked up by then, and the office was to be closed on Easter Monday. Drat!

When I got home around 2:30 in the afternoon, John was asleep. As goofy as my sleep schedule is, John's is relatively sane, but still wonky at times. We didn't do the candy thing or any other Easter observance together, since he's both an atheist and anti-sugar. But we had a pleasant evening with chicken wings and tv.

I just skipped over the weirdest part of the day. Let me tell you about it.

Not the same evening, but you get the idea.

What with Easter, tv, John and the chicken wings, I forgot to take the dogs to the dog park until quite late, about 7 PM instead of 5:30 or 6 PM. I didn't want to "cheat" them out of a dog park visit for the third time in a week, so we went anyway, arriving more or less at dusk. Just outside the double gate at the Picnic Place entrance to Miko's Corner Playground, five children were hanging out, with no adult in sight. They asked whether they were allowed in the dog park, and I let them come in with me and the dogs.

The dogs and I spent the better part of an hour with the kids, who ranged in age from about 6 to 10. One little girl offered to carry the dogs' leashes for me, and a little boy asked to throw away a filled poop bag, and to get me a fresh one when Cayenne squatted again. They all wanted to ask lots of questions about dogs in general, and Cayenne and Pepper in particular, such as what kind of dog Pepper was, whether they knew how to fetch balls and "shake," and what was the red dog's name again? They'd never heard of cayenne pepper. One little boy told me he's drawn an alien with a dog's head, and asked whether aliens were real. Another boy had a dog when he was one year old, and wanted another now that he was 10 and dogless. I heard about a neighborhood chihuahua named Chico, and how two of the kids used to be scared of dogs and weren't any more. Pepper surprised me by allowing the kids to pet her repeatedly, as did Cayenne, although Cayenne gave a warning snap at the air when one boy got a little rough toward the end. I showed them about cleaning up after dogs, and told them a little about the history of dogs and why there are so many different kinds of them in different shapes and sizes.

Eventually it occurred to the kids to let their adults know where they were; they'd told them they were going to the duck pond. A kid went and checked in, and a woman returned with her briefly to cope out the situation and make sure everything was okay. Soon after that, the kids went to rejoin their families, and the dogs and I went home.

At 2:30 AM Sunday night/Monday morning, I decided that the few bits of candy at the church's coffee hour constituted insufficient Easter decadence, so I headed over to a 24-hour Walgreen's, site of many a last-minute holiday shopping trip. The Easter candy had not yet been discounted, but I treated myself to a 69 cent chocolate bunny and one of those chocolate-and-coconut birds' nests with jelly beans for eggs. Somehow the cashier and I ended up discussing politicians. She was trying to win a contest to go to Washington DC and meet Bill Clinton's campaign manager, James Carville, because she wants a career as a political adviser. She went on to tell me that when she was 11 years old, she and her family had a personal encounter with Clinton just as they'd run out of film and the press was leaving a campaign event. One of her little brothers was crying, and Clinton asked him why.

"My brother hit me!" the kid complained.

Bill Clinton picked up the little boy, said something to cheer him, and set him down again. A moment later he was gone, off to his helicopter ride to wherever he was scheduled to go next. The family checked all the press reports, but nobody reported the incident or took a picture.

I deliberately stayed up the rest of the night so that I could stop by the church first thing in the morning, hoping to retrieve my jacket. There was a Morning Prayer scheduled, which I misremembered as a mass. I timed my arrival for the end of the supposed service, but when I got there the place was deserted and the church was locked. As I turned to head slowly back to the car, Father Smith came in sight, to say Morning Prayer for Easter Monday. I became his one-woman congregation for this, and afterward he heard my confession as well. I got to retrieve my jacket, and we even discussed the mechanics of health savings accounts, something John has been threatening to go over in detail with me for the past month.

Well, anyway.

Aside from all that, I've successfully registered for the Federal extension of my unemployment, followed up on John's insistence that Craig's List has job listings for accountants (they do, sort of, but nothing that's remotely applicable to me or unlisted elsewhere), read through 4 1/2 Harry Potter books, done some stuff online, and very nearly finished my Auditing section of the CPA review course. I also picked up my previous, unfixed camera from Geek Squad. It's dead, Jim.

And tonight I discovered that the reason I've been having major computer slowdowns lately is that the hard drive was almost full. So I spent a couple hours copying most of my 2009 photos onto both external hard drives and organizing them, so that I could them delete my unedited photos from February and March from the C: drive. Meanwhile, of course, I've taken and edited a bunch more pictures, at church and elsewhere.

Give me another day or so, and I should be able to get caught up on my blogging. First up: my somewhat delayed entry for the Ellipsis Monday. Photo Shoot.

But first I'll sleep, I think!

Karen

F&FFF: The Naked Husky

For Felines with Feathers plus Furballs Friday:

Cayenne and Pepper: sort of together, sort of not.

As previously mentioned, I'm extremely busy this week with Holy Week services and such; but even so the dogs have only missed out on the dog park one day this week. A couple days ago, one of the other dogs in frequent attendance was so startling in his new appearance that I had to show him to you. Here he is with Pepper:

What the heck...? Let's take another look.

It looks for all the world like the head of a large husky, stuck on the body of a smaller white dog. They shaved his fur off for the upcoming Arizona summer, but left his head alone. I overheard that it took two and a half hours to do it. The results are very bizarre to see.

Still, the dog himself doesn't seem to mind.

I've been taking more photos of Holy Week rituals at church, with mixed results. I'll post some selections from that later.

Karen

Dogs in Motion

When I broke in my new camera yesterday (a Canon PowerShot SX110 IS), naturally I started with photos of the dogs. The first shot isn't worth showing you. It was Cayenne in the kitchen, in motion. The problem with the picture is that I had not yet discovered that the flash on this camera has to be flipped up into position. So: no flash, lousy photo.

But from there on out I got quite a few good ones. Here is photo #2, sharpened once, but otherwise basically unedited. And here is a portrait of Pepper:

After that it was on to the dog park. It was well after 6 PM, but the light of sunset was sufficient for the Canon to get some fairly amazing action shots. Here are a few of them:

Pepper amazed me Friday and Saturday. After months of almost completely ignoring the dozens of tennis balls littering the dog park, Pepper went after one on Friday, and went on to chase one for me three times. She mostly didn't bring it back, but it was still a big step for Ms. Independent & Contrary. By Saturday evening she was even sorta-kinda bringing them back to me. Good Pepper!

Karen

F&FFF: A Real Dog

I need to sleep for a bit before I post the Weekend Assignment, and at this moment I have no clue what the new topic will be. Pathetic, ain't it? Meanwhile, for Furballs with Felines and Feathers Friday, let me introduce you to the real dog I passed off at both "Cinnamon" and "Garlic" in last night's April Fool's entry.

Murphy - who is not named for Murphy Brown

This is Murphy. She belongs to Steph. Murphy is at the dog park pretty much every evening with Steph, although not always at the same time we're there. She has never yet let me pet her, but she's getting a little closer to that each day. Murphy is like Tuffy was: shy and standoffish. Encroach on her and she'll bark or run away, but stand around and eventually she'll come up behind you for a cautious sniff.

She seldom plays with other dogs, either, but here too she's improving. Steph thinks that Murphy feels most dog behavior is beneath her dignity.

Ah, bliss!

But after Steph pets Cayenne, Murphy will approach Steph for attention, and be quite affectionate. See what a little competition can do!

Just playin' - for the moment

Something a little disturbing happened at the dog park the other day. A woman who is there every afternoon with her brother(?) and something like seven dogs thought she had hit upon a way to deter dogs from getting into fights, as has happened a number of times recently. She had a Taser with her. When dogs got too rambunctious, on the verge of possibly fighting instead of playing, she turned it on and called off the dogs - not just her own, but any dogs involved. Understand: she did not shock the dogs, didn't even touch them. But the electrical zap and clack-a-clack noise near sensitive dog ears was enough to encourage dogs to back off.

She did this a few times on Tuesday, as I and other humans watched. Cayenne, who had been at the edge of the pack as usual, came to me afterward for comfort and didn't leave. I wasn't going to say anything to the woman, who is rather nice, but the owner of an eight-month-old puppy who had been trying to play with the other dogs was quite upset. Another woman half-heartedly defended the use of the Taser as a noisemaking deterrent, as long as the woman never actually used it on a dog, which she said she would not. I have to wonder, though, whether she would indeed do that if a dog was biting and refused to back off at the sound of the clack and zap!

The question came up whether it was legal to carry a Taser into the dog park and use it in this way. When I got home, I called the police non-emergency line and asked, not to get the woman in trouble, but just to know the legality of the situation. It turns out she does have the right to do that, as long as she doesn't abuse a dog (which the policeman on the phone seemed to think would involve actually shocking the dog) or threatening a human. So that seemed to be that - except that she didn't have the Taser out tonight (perhaps no need?). A police car was hanging out in the parking lot when I arrived, only to loop past me and leave as the dogs and I emerged from the car. Coincidence? Maybe. I only know that I don't like to see conflict at the dog park. But that human - and canine - nature, isn't it?

Karen

EMPS: Footprints of a Gigantic Hound (or Not)

When Carly called for photos of footprints for her Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #31: Footprints, I thought about past attempts to photograph such things, along a path next to the airplane Boneyard a few years ago and, unsurprisingly, at the dog park. These photos proved rather challenging to take and edit, because there is very little contrast or color variation to work with. I will add photos from these previous attempts to this entry if I can find them, but last night while my internet connection was down for hours I failed to turn them up. So let's start with Monday's new ones, taken - where else? - at the dog park.

From EMPS

The dirt track at Miko's Corner is fairly sandy, so when the ground is dry the footprints of dogs and humans are fairly indistinct. But if you look carefully at the shot above you can make out at least a few pawprints.

For this one I deliberately stood in the water splashed by dogs drinking (I think the fountain leaks a little as well). The resulting footprints from walking away soon dried into invisibility.

This is an FX shot using negative, saturation and solarization. I wanted something more extreme, but brown and grey images don't lend themselves to wild effects in photo editing programs.

This rather atypical shot of Pepper is from April 2008. I may have posted it before, but this version is newly reedited to emphasize the pawprints. I suspect Pepper's extreme unfluffiness here was due to her being wet and muddy.

More later, maybe!

An update to yesterday's entry: I'm giving GMail a spin. The address at gmail.com is Mavarin2. Feel free to help me try it out!

Karen

F&FFF: Tug of War.

For Feline and Furball with Feathers Friday:

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Last time I checked, Pepper only had one vote on my cute dog photo poll, which says to me that either everyone really likes Cayenne better or I just haven't taken a good enough photo of Pepper yet. Here are two more attempts, before we get to the other topic of the morning. I still haven't really captured her at her best, but I'll keep trying.

I should be able to come up with a clever metaphorical subtext for the next couple of photos, something about rivalry between the dogs or being pulled in different directions in how I spend my days. But let's skip all that, and just look at the pictures!

After several recent unpleasant incidents, a grand time was had by all at the dog park on Friday evening. The "regulars" chatted and watched their dogs romp, without a single skirmish. The highlight came when this boxer and this white dog got into a tug of war with the half-destroyed inner core of a soccer ball. They were obviously enjoying the game, and all the humans stood and watched, even joking about placing bets on the winner.

I was rooting for the bulldog, but the white dog won every time!

A couple of times, this brindle mastiff puppy managed to get hold of the prize as well, so that it was a three-way tug. Cayenne, Pepper and other dogs surrounded the contestants, barking.

It's funny how different people observe the same canine behaviors and draw different conclusions. One of my friend at the dog park, Steph, calls Cayenne a "regulator" because of the way she hovers near play-fights and barks. Her theory is that Cayenne is playing cop, telling the other dogs to behave. I think she's merely excited by what's going on and wants to be part of it.

Karen

F&FFF: West Side Story

For the third weekend in a row, the dogs and I have gone exploring and come home with a week's worth of pictures. Tonight I'll be posting the first two entries, one for Steven's Feline and Furball Friday and one for the Round Robin Photo Challenges. I expect there will be more entries for the next few days after that.

No, it's not Reid Park again, but you're on the right track. We visited the oldest dog park in Tucson, in Columbus Park on Silverbell Road - the only dog park with a world class view! And if that wasn't enough, we went on to catch sunset at the most famous sunset spot in this part of the state: the scenic lookout at the top of Gates Pass.

This is all on the western edge of Tucson, with the park right at the city limits and Gates Pass outside them. I live on the near east side, a 30 to 60 minute drive away depending on traffic and construction. The result is that I only get out there about once a year, at dog licensing time.

From West Side Story

And guess what? It's go licensing time! Pepper was a few days overdue, and I wanted to update the county's records on Pepper's name and Tuffy's demise. That was my excuse for the drive across town, but I also had other motives, as we shall see.

The county pound used to be called Pima County Animal Control, but now it's been renamed the more animal-friendly Pima Animal Care Center. Awww. Historically it's a rather grim place, nice enough on the outside, but all concrete floors and poorly lit steel cages inside. It was built in the late 1960s, if I'm correctly recalling an article about it, and has been in serious need of expansion and upgrading. And now it's getting it! The grey section on the left of the shot above is a modern new addition, still under construction.

Pepper goes wading in Silverbell Lake while Cayenne skirts the edge.

I also wanted to check out the dog park at the city park on Silverbell, which was supposed to be one of the best in the city. It's not practical to take the dogs there on a regular basis, but I can take them once, as part of my gradually reviewing the different dog parks around town. Besides, I remembered that park as being pretty neat in its own right, the site of Silverbell Lake, and a place to fly motorized toy airplanes.

It took nearly an hour to drive across town, because I foolishly took Grant Road which had construction in two places. But there was no wait at all to get the license take care of, and soon I was back in the car, looking for the park. I didn't exactly remember where it was, and had the name of it wrong. I thought it was south of animal control, and called Silverbell Park. It was actually just north of Animal Care, and called Christopher Columbus Park.

Fishin' at Silverbell Lake.

And it's rather beautiful. It can't match Reid Park for diversity of features or sheer size, but let's face it, Reid Park is domesticated urban landscaping in the middle of a city. Columbus Park is a more natural setting, and I think the lake may be real in origin. The city stocks it with fish, and you need an "urban fishing license" to fish there. However, the ducks and geese, coots and herons need no such permissions.

At first glance, the dog park area (or "Off-Leash Dog Area") in Columbus Park is just so-so. It has some grass, which is a big improvement over a few other dog parks in town, but I don't think the city gives it as much effort as the grass in Miko's Corner Playground.

The water fountain doesn't have a dog level, but there's a separate faucet for filling large water dishes, which looked rather muddy to me. But it has a covered picnic table, solar-powered lighting, a lost and found shelf, a small dog area, and a fair number of dogs to play with. A dog park regular named Mickey told me that this was the city's first dog park a decade or so ago, a test program. The dog owners raised the money for many of the improvements, including concrete and the solar-powered lights. When the city recently proposed moving it elsewhere in the park and redoing it like Miko's Corner, the dog owners protested, on the grounds that they would lose the mature trees and other features of the existing site.

The dog park at Christopher Columbus Park also has two things that Miko's Corner doesn't have. One, it has two large pink concrete pipes for dogs to walk or crawl through, like a doggie habitrail or obstacle course thingy. Unsurprisingly, neither Cayenne nor Pepper was interested in crossing them.

And two, it has the best view of any dog park I've ever seen!

I have lots more photos of this beautiful place, with and without the dogs in them, but I'll save those for later. On to the Round Robin entry!

Karen