Office visitor loves dogs & was featured on WRAL!

Today at work, Robert, who works in pest control, was doing his monthly rounds. As usual, he stopped by to chat. Somehow I mentioned my dog Lucy and he mentioned his dog Cooper and how he'd been featured on a recent news story on WRAL. Check it out:

http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/travel/video/2986166/

In case the video-clip doesn't work, the story is about how he built his Jack Russell Terrier (JRT), Cooper, a tree house! How cute is that?

video clip from March - Lucy and Stu in backyard

This video clip wouldn't upload for some reason a while back, but it finally did.

Here is Stuart working with Lucy in the backyard, showing off Lucy's jumping abilities to my parents. The woman laughing is my mother.

Ticks falling out of trees?

Can this be true? According to my parents this is. Given that my family is from New York (at least 2 generations on 1 side), we are given to, well, Woody Allen style paranoia. My first response was that this was another dramatic exaggeration, and I nodded politely and said, "yeah, yeah" and "ah hah".

But, then I thought about our last hike. It was in a nature reserve owned by the TLC (Triangle Land Conservancy) off of Holley Springs Road in Cary. It is wild and beautiful, with a steep hike up hill to a lovely view and only has a small and well-maintained foot path. The hike was wonderful and Lucy even got a little splash in the stream. I'll have to upload that video clip later. Anyhow, when we got home, we did our usual "tick inspection." To my shock, we found not 1 or 2, but 3 ticks on Lucy. Thankfully, only 1 had latched on and the other 2 were very easy to remove. I even found 1 tick on my pant legs. I caught it crawling up. Yes, it was odd for me to wear long pants hiking in some 80+ degree weather, but the woods are shady, so I preferred it (thankfully).

Apparently there was some feature story on our local NPR station about the ticks in North Carolina. I missed this story on air, but I'd like to hear it.

Unfortunatly, there isn't much you can do to prevent tick exposure. The only things I can think of are: avoiding overgrown hiking trails or hiking trails all together in this hot summer, wearing long pants tucked into socks and closed shoes and staying inside completely. The last option is not realistic, especially since I have a dog and I wouldn't want to anyways.

2 scared dogs & nail painting - only at Petsmart

Yesterday, we took Lucy to Petsmart, which is always an adventure. The one in this area has a "doggie day camp" that you can view through glass. The room was pretty small and full of a lot of dogs ranging from 1 scared chihuahua to 2 extremely large Labradors. My heart sank when I saw the chihuahua standing there alone in the center of the room, shivering and holding his tail between his legs. His face looked so concerned that I felt myself get angry at the Petsmart staff for traumatizing this dog. I was about to barge in and give them a piece of my mind when Stuart insisted that keep shopping and that the dog would be alright. At most - responsible - doggie day camps, like CampBowWow, they separate the dogs based on size which just makes sense.

I snapped a few pics from my iphone that I'll post here later.

The adventure continued. As we were turning the corner out of an aisle, we were surprised to see a woman and two very large mastiffs! 1 mastiff sniffed Lucy happily and slobbered all over Lucy's ear. It was cute. Lucy sniffed back, tail wagging. All was good. Then the other Mastiff wanted to greet Lucy. Lucy's tail was wagging and she playfully jumped up a bit. That Mastiff growled a bit and then suddenly pulled away with his tail between his legs. I was surprised to see a scared Mastiff, especially next to a small 25 pound dog like Lucy.

Then we made a short visit to the fish section, where Stuart selected some more fish for his fish pond. Lucy was bored, so I took her for a walking tour around the store while Stuart shopped. She seemed to love sniffing every shelf. True to her terrier nature, she kept trying to climb UNDER the shelving, which I tried to discourage. She did catch me off guard when she hunkered down and crawled through a large cat toy installation! My dog Lucy who likes cat jungle gyms - that cracked me up.

And just when I thought our adventure was over and we were checking out, I noticed that they had a "doggie spa" in the front. I saw a medium sized white short haired dog leashed and a Petsmart employee leaning over her paws. I couldn't believe my eyes. The employee was painting the dogs nails bright red. I told Stuart that I had to investigate. I took Lucy with me and walked into the "dog spa" and asked the lady upfront, "I'm just curious but are you actually painting that dog's nails? Does the owner actually want that?" One employee shot back a comment, "Don't be judgemental." That surprised me and I laughed, "You're right, I am being judgmental but I just have never seen or heard of this before and I wanted to know about it."

The young woman still painting the nails looked up at me and said, "Yeah, the owner wants it and it only costs $3, so what's the big deal."
"Interesting," I said, "Tell me that the dog is a female one at least...not that that matters."
"She is a girl," she replied. "But what is unusual about this is the breed of dogs. Most women have their poodles or Chihuahua's nails done, not a larger pit bull like dog like this one."
At this point Stuart had walked in behind me.
"Crazy," I whispered, as he looked over my shoulder at the nail painting. He smiled.

I said my good-byes and we headed out of Petsmart - a place full of strange and interesting small adventures.

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