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Monthly Archives: April 2012

In which Yaris learns about waves

Did you know Orange County has a dog beach?  It’s a mile long stretch of beach where dogs are welcome to run around.  Technically, dogs are supposed to be leashed while on the beach, but on their website they say that the rule has generally only been applied unleashed, potentially dangerous dogs.   I guess if your dog is not acting in a potentially dangerous manner, you’re ok.  Actually, they do ask you to use common sense and to keep your dog leashed until they’re acclimated to the area and to not bring your dog if it has a history of being aggressive.

Yaris enjoys the view.

Welp, Yaris isn’t particularly aggressive nor dangerous, so last week I took her to the dog beach.  I wanted to see how she’d react to the sand and water.  She took to it rather well.  Sand doesn’t bother her at all but the waves were a little disconcerting for her.  Once, she went down to investigate all the water and was caught off-guard by an incoming wave.  She turned around to run away but then tripped over her own legs and fell into the water.  This the day after she fell into the lake.  I’m not really sure why she’s so clumsy.

Other than that, she had a really good time running like a crazy dog up and down the beach, sometimes with a pack of other dogs.  She met another GSD with whom she got along.  That’s worthy of note, since she’s normally pretty shy around dogs her size and larger.  She really likes to play with smaller dogs, but I don’t think we’ve met any smaller dogs who like Yaris.

Besides running around, Yaris did a lot of exploring as the beach runs along a rocky cliff and she dug a rather nice hole in her quest to find the white dot (reflection off my watch).  She also followed some kids around who were looking for shells.  She had to investigate and approve each one they picked up.  So nosy.

Trying out those wave things again.

Yaris really enjoyed the freedom to run.  But she would always turn back to see what I was doing and see if she should run back.  So considerate.  At least in terms of not running off without you.

As for me, I found the beach to be really clean.  Amazingly so.  Dog owners were good about picking up after their dog and there was no litter on the beach.  No litter.  That’s hard to believe but I really didn’t see any litter there.  I guess it helps that there are no fire pits at the dog beach, so it means no grilling and thus no food packages to be blown away in the wind to land somewhere else in the sand.

Also, it wasn’t very crowded.  Granted, I went in the middle of the day on a Thursday (random week off from work, remember?), but going up the coast I saw a bunch of people on other spots of the beach.  You can see in the pictures that there weren’t really that many people.  It was mostly just people being tolerantly amused at their dogs’ antics.  There were a few sunbathers too and I think most of them had dogs that were running around.  But I think there were some who just came to enjoy a litter-free beach as well.

In which Yaris has a small accident

I had some unplanned time off from work last week, so I took the time to finally, FINALLY get my annual parking pass to the regional and wilderness parks in Orange County.  I have long coveted one of these passes.  It’s been hard for me to obtain one because of the hours I’ve been working.  The offices at the regional parks close at 15:30 M-F and they aren’t opened on the weekends (not that it would have mattered of late).

Anyway, I like the regional parks.  The little community parks that are around my area are nice, but they aren’t very explorable.  A lot of them are just an expanse of grass with a playground that sprouts up in the middle.  They’re nice, but you’re constantly tripping over small children or you’re trying to convince the parents of small children that your dog won’t eat their small children.  Not like my dogs particularly enjoy eating small children.

It’s true that the wilderness parks would be even more explorable than the regional parks and community parks, but I can’t bring a dog into those areas.  So…I’m not sure how often I’ll go to the wilderness parks since Yaris likes to accompany me to go exploring.  Choco…doesn’t like to get out much these days.

Anyway, I was enjoying my new found unfettered access to the regional parks along with Yaris last week when she decided she really wanted to go see the ducks in the lake.  Yaris really likes birds, you see.  She likes birds in that…she likes to eat them.  She’s caught a few from our backyard and eaten them and then left feathers all over the house for me before.  The first few times we were at the park, she saw the ducks but decided it was ok to look at them from afar.  This time, she decided she’d really like a closer look.  So I let her.

We walked up to one of the lakes where all the ducks were out in the middle of the lake.  I wasn’t about to get us kicked out because Yaris was terrorizing ducks.  I figured the ducks in the middle of the lake were safe enough from Yaris’ taste for birds.  Anyway, we slowed down a bit as we got closer to the shore since it gets a bit steep because the lake levels are low for pump maintenance.  So, as we were slowly approaching the water, Yaris bent down a bit to sniff it out and then…promptly fell in.  I think she was a bit surprised.  I’m not sure what she was expecting.  The water wasn’t very deep where she fell in, so she really only got her legs wet, but I still had to drag her out.  There was a very prominent “no swimming” sign where Yaris fell in.  Granted, it depicted a humanoid figure swimming and not a canine, but again, I wasn’t about to get my park privileges thrown out because Yaris decided to take a dip.

I decided that Yaris wasn’t going to get to see the ducks after that.