Every year a veterinarian needs to complete a certain number of hours of continuing education. There are many ways to achieve this - wet labs, seminars, lectures, and conferences. I generally do some lectures and seminars, but I almost always attend a conference every year. I just love conferences. First of all, you can get almost all your hours completed in a couple of days. Plus, you can choose to go somewhere - Vegas, Florida, Banff, sometimes even to tropical destinations. It's almost a little mini holiday with work thrown in.
This year I decided to keep it close to home and went to Banff. Banff, Alberta is about a 4 hour drive from Edmonton and is a beautiful mountain town. I really didn't want to be away for too long, or too far with Kenna still being so young. But as it turned out, my boyfriend decided he wasn't entirely comfortable being left with all 6 pets, and I would have to get someone to come over part way through the day to let Kenna out since she still can't make it a full work day just yet.
The Fairmont in Banff is like a castle!
Sleeping during lectures
As a result, I ended up taking Kenna with me, with plans to leave her at the hotel and come back at lunch to let her out. Which I did the first day, but it used up my entire lunch hour and made me late for the afternoon lectures, so I checked with the conference staff and was told I could bring her with me if I wanted, so long as she was not aggressive.
Kenna was super pleased with this arrangement. There were so many people to pet her and give her treats. I was really pleased with her confidence and manners. She does still need some work to not jump up on people who are engaging with her, however she walked nicely with me and didn't try to visit unless given permission. Lunch was buffet style and she was very polite around the food. She didn't try to jump on the tables or stick her nose up on the tables. She was good in lectures for the most part, settling down and sleeping, or entertaining herself with a toy quietly. She got many compliments on her sweet temperament and her good behaviour. One person even asked if she was a service dog because she was so well mannered! Good baby dog!
For the second year in a row we took a trip out to the west coast to visit my friend Anne, this time for the joyous celebration of her wedding! It was something of a bittersweet trip, as last year when I made the trip Summit came with us. This year I elected to leave him at home and just bring the girls as we planned to do some hiking.
We started out in Banff National Park for a day of hiking. We saw the Johnston Falls and the Ink Pots which were super cool. Kili tried out her new backpack for the very first time, which I was excited about. After a few seconds of turning her head in either direction trying to figure it out she proceeded to ignore it for the rest of the day (except when I went into it to get treats out for her, then she discovered she could almost reach into the open pack for herself!). It was a basic hike so I didn't pack much in her bags, just a few snacks for her and Kenna, a water bowl, my camera, and my phone.
I was really pleased with how well the girls walked together. I was worried they would try to play together and generally tangle their lines together, but they walked together almost as well as Kili and Summit do together. There was minimal tangling, and no playing, and Kenna didn't pull or attempt to jump on the many people we ran into on the narrow trails.
The next day was basically entirely driving, so the poor dogs were pretty pent up by the time we reached Abbotsford. We did make one short stop in Revelstoke National park to walk the Giant Cedars Boardwalk. These cedars are hundreds of years old and are absolutely massive! The unique climate in some areas of BC allows for almost a tropical forest of sorts to develop. Absolutely amazing!
The next day was the day of the wedding, so I, rather reluctantly, dropped the girls off at a nearby kennel to spend the day and night. It was very loud, and although the girls weren't too happy to be there, they had each other as I made sure they were kenneled together. I dropped them off as late as I could before we had to head to the ranch where the wedding was being held, and I woke up bright and early the next day and picked them up as soon as the kennel opened. I'm sure the kennel workers thought I was a little overprotective and nuts.
That day we went into White Rock. You may remember that the dogs went running on the White Rock beach last year. Well, they enjoyed it just as much this year.
Here are the girls playing on the beach. Unfortunately, each time we turned on the video camera they refused to do much. And then the camera ran out of battery so we were unable to get more footage to pick and choose from. Oh well!
After our beach run we went for fish and chips on the boardwalk. Here are my good girls politely enjoying themselves, minding their own business. It helped that they had just had a good run, but I was very pleased with them, especially Kenna.
The hotel we stayed at in White Rock had a beachy, Mexican resort type theme. It was very interesting. We felt like we had just stepped out of BC and into a tropical paradise! It was pretty fun! Though, as interesting as this hotel was, I had to question the intelligence of making their pet friendly rooms the farthest away from the hotel doors. It was about a 30 second walk through winding, carpeted corridors to get outside. Kenna is officially house trained. I rushed to get her outside in the morning, praying she wouldn't go on the carpet in the hallway. She didn't. We got outside the main lobby doors and she immediately popped a squat on the driveway right outside the doors. She had to go so badly she couldn't even wait to get to the grass, but she waited until she was outside. Good baby dog!
The girls really enjoyed the hotels!
Finally we rushed through 2 full days of non-stop driving to be back home. Summit was very glad to see us, even the girls. It's good to be home!
Kili, Kenna and I spent 5 days playing with the SuperDogs this summer at the Prince Albert Exhibition, in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. We ended up being on the road for a total of 10 days though as we piggybacked with a long weekend agility trial in Calgary. That's a long time to be on the road doing high impact dog sports, and to top it off it was very hot for most of that time. The girls were troopers and I was happy with how Kili performed even towards the end when I could tell she was hot and tired.
Kili added 3 new events to her skills list - weaves, mats, and relays. I knew she could do mats and weaves, but I was extremely excited that she was able to run relays. It was helpful because this was a small show with only a cast of 6, so it was ideal if everyone had a relay dog because with 3 races we all had to run a dog. Depending on what events we ran in a particular show, I did sometimes run someone else's dog in relay, but it was nice to have Kili as an option. We chose her matches carefully, choosing dogs that wouldn't mind if she crossed lanes and chased, but we only had it happen twice at the beginning of the week and after that she was great. I was really happy that she was able to focus on me instead of the other dog running.
I do need to get another set of weave poles for at home though. Kili has become a pretty proficient weaver, but it was obvious that she was confused by the sheer number of weave poles in SuperDogs. In agility the dogs weave 12 poles. In SuperDogs we do 24 (we ended up having to go down to 18 after the first day because someone stole some of our poles overnight) back to back for a total of 48. On the way down Kili would weave perfectly, on the way back she tended to want to skip the poles. You could almost see her thinking "what the hell? why are there so many?" In her defense, for 50 weeks of the year there are 12 weave poles, and then for 1-2 weeks there are suddenly 48. So I will buy another set for home and get her used to weaving more than 12 in a row periodically.
Of course Kili played disc as well. She's good at it, she has some big freestyle tricks, and of course she's an unusual disc breed so that's quite the draw. We ran both long throw events and freestyle.
It was quite a small cast and crew so it was all hands on deck. Only having 1 dog is a bit tough in SuperDogs. Your dog ends up having to run a lot of events, but they also like to have variety and not see the same dog too much throughout the entire show. Most people have at least 2 performing dogs. Since I only have Kili right now I ended up getting to run other peoples' dogs in events when needed. I got to play with a sport mix (border collie/jack russell), a fluffy mixed breed, a boxer, and a chihuahua.
The chihuahua, Taco, belonged to my roommate and we had a special relationship. He is apparently not overly social and doesn't let people he doesn't know touch him or pick him up. From the get-go though he kept hopping the baby gate between our halves of the hotel room, and so the first morning I reached over (not knowing he doesn't like to be picked up) and picked him up to put him back on his side of the room. My roommate was literally shocked that I didn't get bit. From then on though, he would jump over to my side of the room ALL the time, he even slept with me several nights. He was my special little buddy and I ran him in relays and did a little freestyle routine with him. Maybe next time I should get a chihuahua? ;)
Kenna came along for the experience, and to be my Pat 'n' Chat dog. Kili does not like to be surrounded, especially by children, and I do not put my dogs in situations they are uncomfortable with. While Kili was relaxing after the show, little Kenna got to come out and enjoy some attention which she reveled in (she also loved the treats that go with it!).
This is the final installment in our Vancouver adventure!
On top of the world!
While we were in Vancouver visiting my friend, we decided we would like to go for a hike. A couple of ideas were thrown around but we finally settled on the Stawamus Chief near Squamish, BC. "The Chief" is a monolith (the second largest in the world supposedly). The hike is very tough with difficult scramble sections, especially for the dogs. I really wanted to get some video of Kili climbing the tough bits but I had to be spotting and helping her so I couldn't. I did get some footage of some of the less challenging portions where I felt she didn't need a spotter... they're still pretty intense! I was proud of my little mountain goat!
The hike is 1.8 km and took us about 3.5 hours round trip. The view at the top is completely worth it!
Watching other hikers coming up from below
Check out that view! You can see the road to Vancouver that we drove in on!
Kili and Allie
All 4 of us
It was quite the adventure. Do it again next year?
