The sacred orange Chuck-it ball

In my afternoon trip today, I was down at the water with three ball obsessed dogs equipped with three orange rubber chuck-it balls. We were off in the corner by the big tree enjoying our retrieving relay races. A man standing next to us had a retriever who also had the same orange rubber chuck-it ball. There were a couple times during our rapid fire fetch that one of my dogs would get his ball on accident. He explained that his dog was particular and only liked his own ball so I made sure to always get his ball back from my dogs. It's a bit of work juggling three dogs and four balls but it's not this guy's fault that my dogs can snatch up a ball in .0003 seconds. My dogs were the only guilty ones here, his dog would snatch up any ball nearby but would then immediately spit it back out once he realized it had cooties on it.

After a few minutes of this call juggling I decided it was time to go. I do not enjoy retrieving as much as my dogs do. Just as my last dog clears the gate to leave the beach I hear someone calling after me. It was my ball patrol friend. He told me that one of my dogs must have his dog's ball because he threw the ball out in "the ocean" and his dog refused to go get it. Obviously, the next logical thing to do would be to track down the dog walker. If I had the nerve/time/patience to track down every dog owner at the park that may have potentially stolen a toy of mine, I could have saved literally hundreds of dollars. Maybe even Thousands!

So anyways, to get the taste test of balls set up just right I have all three of my dogs on leash, and managed to have them all cough up at their orange rubber chuck it balls. The guy takes the first ball I hand him and throws it out into the water about 10 yards. The dog swims out to the ball, grabs it, spits it back out. "whoops, guess that wasn't it" the guy laughs. I'm starting to feel like the retriever again. Good thing we have two more rounds to go.

Meanwhile, the ball connoisseur is swimming out into "the ocean" and retrieving the original ball in question. He brings it all the way back to the store and then drops it for another one of the balls that my dogs gave up. I was too preoccupied with that combined 250 pounds of leashed dog who were trying to get in on the ball buffet to notice which ball the dog actually decided it was his. Whichever one it was it only lasted for about 50 yards before he gave it up again and tried to start the whole game over. As much fun as it was, my least dogs and I were ready to move on.

I tried very hard to stay pleasant about the whole situation, reassuring him that this was all a part of the fun of working with dogs. He was very nice and pleasant, and no doubt a very devoted dog owner.

Bottom line, what's yours is yours and if your dog wants his own ball then you have every right to get that ball for your dog. I just wish your dog could accurately detect that sacred ball, and in an ideal world it wouldn't involve 3 other balls. Maybe just one other to narrow it down from would be helpful. And if your dog is able to detect his own scent on a ball so well, couldn't he just go ahead and put some smell on there that will deter any other dog? That would be really helpful. Thanks.

Life lessons from Nancy

Some of you may already know this, but Nancy and I have a history long before ballwalkpark. She is my best friend's mom. I was a 3rd teenager for her to worry about living in the basement in high school. She was my crew coach. I was the photographer at her wedding. These days, I am writing her paycheck, but she is still my fr-om (friend + mom). With all these different roles over the years, it's only natural that my life would be influenced by Nancy in some (i.e. many) ways. I remember one of my first Nancy memories (before I moved in the basement, before Hilary and I were even friends) when she was my crew coach. I was trying to tell her that I was sick and couldn't go out in the boat. If you're familiar with crew, you know that you need 8 people to go out in the boat and while you can go out with 7, it's definitely not ideal, so Nancy was doing her good coach role and convincing me to go in the boat. I remember her telling me that when she has a cold she likes to work out because it gets you breathing hard helps clear out the congestion, gets the blood flowing, etc. She said you just have to make yourself do it and you will almost always feel better after. I don't think I was buying it at the time, but I realized I had no way out, so I went out for our workout and, just as Nancy said, came back feeling a lot better.

For whatever reason, her "sweating out the cold" advice really stuck with me and it has come to me countless times over the years. I've replayed this conversation in my head to motivate myself to not call in sick to my restaurant shift, to take Bailey for a walk even if I don't feel like it, and these days, to make the most of my park trips even if everything in me is saying to go home and go to bed. Once you get there and get busy doing whatever it is you went there to do, you will always feel better.

Today as I pulled up to the park I was feeling pretty miserable. As I was picking up dogs I got hit with that wave of drowsiness that tells you a cold is most likely on it's way. A blanket and couch were sounding pretty amazing, but I had 7 amped up dogs in my truck so there was no turning back. I was sure that I would be a walking zombie potentially getting trampled by my own dogs.

When I got the dogs into the park we met up with Nancy and her pack a few minutes later. Once I got busy playing with the dogs I realized how much better I was feeling. It was another one of those moments where the "Nancy crew coach" conversation came to mind and I couldn't help but think how ironic it was that there I was standing right next to her, at our "office", as my friend + mom + employee. Fr-om-ee?

Dog park karma

I am not an overly superstitious or spiritual person, but one thing I do believe in dog park karma. There are two main rules of the dog park (in my opinion) - they are:

1. Never leave the park with a toy that you didn't bring. Either a very generous park patron (i.e. park god) intentionally left toys for all the dogs to enjoy or someone lost their new fancy overpriced toy within the first 10 minutes of getting to the park. Either way,  it's not yours. Does that mean you have to deny your pup the pure bliss of the overpriced brand new toy? Not necessarily.

When my pups and I find a gift from the park gods, we ask everyone around us if they are missing it. If nobody is, then we play to our hearts content right up until we leave the park. Then we leave it right inside the gate for the next lucky pup to find. Because of this, I believe, we are lucky enough to stumble up on fun, exciting, overpriced dog toys at the park at least a couple times a week. If you think I'm crossing over into the crazy dogwalker world then you try keeping track of those toys at $15 a pop! They are like gold!

Moral of the story: obey the rules and the park gods will reward you. Break the rules and you will be cursed to lose every fancy toy you bring to the park before you can even blink an eye! (this is based on experience, I'm not trying to scare you into leaving toys for me at the park, I'm not that cheap ;)

2. This is the important one. I actually get a little OCD about this. PICK UP POOP. Dogwalker's often get criticism from the public that we don't pick up all of our dog's poop. For 90% of us, that couldn't be farther from the truth. While we may miss a dog half way across the field, we are picking up 10 poops for the 2 poops in the area that actually came from our dogs. Not to mention we have monthly work parties to come pick up poop on Saturday mornings - voluntarily - now if that's not dedication, I don't know what is! But seriously, on behalf of the 90% of dogwalkers that I work with, we do more than our share of poop scooping.

We proudly advertise this fact by carrying disgustingly full clear plastic bags of poop around the park with us. It could almost be considered a dogwalker's accessory. We really need to work on placing garbage cans closer together...

At some point in the past 3 years I got in my head that if I were to ever walk by a poop and consciously decide to not pick it up, I was docked a couple dog park karma points. In reality, I can't pick up every poop I pass if I'm running after a dog or have 5 dogs on leash or whatever the case may be, but when I am just strolling along and I see a poop, I feel obligated to pick it up. I'm human, just like the rest of us (except the dogs, of course), and I don't always do what I am supposed to - especially if I don't have a bag nearby or perhaps I am just feeling especially anti-overachiever at the moment. What happens when you don't pick up poop? You step in poop. I was reminded of that lesson today moments before leaving the park after a logging in a combined 4 hours.

Moral of the story: dogwalker or not, you've probably missed a few piles before too, so buy yourself some karma points (and promise of clean shoes) and pick up whatever you find. After all, we're in this shit together, right?! Oh, and if you want to come down to Magnuson for the poop scoop parties (yup, it's a party), they are the 1st Saturday of every month from 10am-1pm, the more the merrier!

Milkshake's walk down the aisle is in a magazine!

One of the greatest, if not the greatest, honors in my ballwalkpark history was being asked to walk Milkshake down the aisle at Ben and Lori's wedding. As with everything else dog related, including your dog in your wedding is apparently an increasing trend nationwide. Milkshake got his 15 minutes of fame in this month's edition of Natural Awakenings - read the article here! You can read my account of the days events in my blog post: bearer of the ring bearer pt.2 

I am glad I got some experience walking Milkshake down the aisle because I know one thing for certain and that is that Bam and Bailey will be a part of my wedding!