Adventures at the dog park...

Is anyone else super glad it's almost the weekend? That's a ridiculous question, who wouldn't be glad for the weekend? Especially this one! Up here in Canada it's a 3-day-er. One of the many things to love about summer is the abundance of long weekends, there's pretty much one every month! Anyways, today I am not here to talk weekends, I am here to talk dog park!

Sometimes when we're feeling brave we like to take Leroy to the off-leash dog park in our area. It's so much better than any dog parks I typically hear about, because it's essentially a big nature trail through the woods, that's completely fenced in and dog friendly. It's so nice to walk through. The only problem? I usually spend the whole time a completely anxious nutball because Leroy is so god-awful off leash. He has no recall to speak of. What's the problem, you might ask, since it's fenced in... well, it's also HUGE, so he could definitely get lost. And it's very wooded.

My husband doesn't freak out like me, so he's responsible for chasing Leroy down every time he strays away from us. This makes me feel a bit better. What is it about laying blame on someone else that makes me feel better about a bad situation? Like, if he gets lost I can feel like it's my husbands fault, and somehow that will make me feel ok about losing our dog? Haha. The mind works in mysterious ways, friends!

After the walk through the woods, there is a wide open area for silly doggy play. Leroy is energetic and loves other dogs, but he's pretty shy and submissive at first. It always leaves me wondering if something happened to him we don't know about? He wasn't like this a year ago. Anyway, it works out ok, he just wants to sniff the other dog before committing to play!!

The best thing about the dog park is the exhausted dog at the end. It makes all of the anxiety worth it. The only downfall to this park is the whole no water for swimming thing. Ottawa SUCKS for this. Any land that's city owned has a very strict NO DOGS in the water policy! We are still looking for somewhere nearby to take him... Even without the swimming though, he's one tired puppy. Success!