Skip navigation

Tag Archives: choco

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.

I make! Sharpie tie dye edition (2)

Remember this from last week?  It’s ok if you don’t.  There has been an abnormal amount of posts between then and now.

Last week, we played with permanent markers and isopropyl alcohol and managed to tie dye some cloth.  Not t-shirts.  Because can’t imagine the girls wearing tie dye t-shirts on a regular basis.  And thus, we transformed those very colorful pieces of cloth into these!

The stuffed milk carton is a cell phone charm, which is attached to a cell phone, which is in the bag.

This one ended up being sewn by another counselor-like person because the kiddo wasn't able to make it.

And this one is mine, which was the sample.

You’ll note that there were four pieces of cloth from last time and only three bags shown.  That’s because one of the girls suffered a quite a few technical difficulties and wasn’t quite able to finish her bag.  But instead of opting to let me whip it up for her, she decided she would  finish it on her own as she was starting to feel more comfortable with the sewing machine toward the end.  Good for her.

I had the girls follow Tally’s instructions for her lined dice bags and you can find a well-written tutorial on her site.  The lining we used was more of the same cloth we had tie dyed (but not dyed, of course).  As for mine, I made a couple of modifications. But first, a story.

I have been thinking about starting Yaris on clicker training (or really just training her in general).  I’ve been terribly lax about her education and I don’t really want her to grow up to be a heathen.  I haven’t really had the time to train her like I had with Choco.  So, while Yaris is quite smart, she’s wasting all that smart on things like getting people to play with her or how to best dig a trench in the backyard (she actually hasn’t dug any trenches in a long time).  Well, it’s time to change that, but in order to entice her to learn new things, I need a bag of treats.  The treats I can handle.  I make my own training treats and I’ll probably post the recipe sometime in the future.  The bag part wasn’t working.  They were too expensive for what I wanted to do, or too ugly, or too large, or too small, or had too many extra things I didn’t want…it just wasn’t what I was looking for.  So, I made my own.

Enter my modification(s):

It actually isn’t much of a modification.  I just made two smaller tubes of cloth, flipped them inside out, and then sewed them in at step 7 from the tutorial.  Actually, that’s what I had meant to do but I had forgotten until I had almost finished.  Good thing I am friends with the seam ripper.  I have two loops because I was uncertain about weight distribution when I was sewing this up.  With two loops, I can either hook the carabiner through both loops or just one depending on how many treats are in the bag.  And a carabiner works for me because I am almost always wearing a belt.  You can take a look at all the other treat bags on the market for ideas if you don’t want a carabiner.

The other modification was also minor.  I recently came into possession of a Crop-a-dile eyelet and punch setter and I wanted to try it out.  So in place of the buttonhole for the ribbon, I used two 3/16″ eyelets side by side.  I don’t have a picture of it, sorry.  It works just fine in case you can’t figure out how to use your buttonhole foot on your sewing machine.  You may want to put an extra liner where the eyelets are though.  Depending on how loose a weave your cloth is, it may rip and fray.

So, I am now in possession of one very colorful treat bag.  I kind of matches Yaris’ personality and I’m sure it’ll make all the other dogs jealous.  I’m sure.