Weekend full of fun!

***Warning - This is a long one!

This was a busy and very great weekend! I'll start with Thursday night. We met Josh and Katrina at a new dog park after work. It's actually a bird sanctuary that's fenced off, but it's very dog friendly and they can even go off leash. We kept Jack on the leash at first because it was a new place and there were a lot of new dogs to meet. Unfortunately, Jack has some aggression issues when he's on the leash. We're still trying to figure out what we can do to make it easier for him to trust that we will take care of him and protect him...More on that a little later. We got him to the river section of the park and he and Stella made friends with a a Chow Chow named Roxie and another dog (I can't remember the other dog's breed or name...they were both pretty exotic). Their human's name was Sandy! They had fun meeting each other and we talked for awhile. We went a little further down the river and there was a perfect area of shore where we could go down and throw Jack's ball into the river. Let me tell you, that dog LOVES the water!!! He kept jumping in and going further and further out. He was awesome!!! After swimming for awhile, Adam and Josh took the dogs to Josh and Katrina's, and Katrina and I went to Q's BBQ (Adam and I had our rehearsal dinner before the wedding there. They have AWESOME food!) and picked up dinner. We watched Boondock Saints while we ate, then Adam and I went home and started prepping for our weekend out of town.

Friday we left the house around 8:30 a.m. and took Jack to the dog park before our car trip. We played for about an hour, trying to tucker him out before we spent 3.5 hours in the car. We thought we tuckered him out good, but he was so excited about being the car for longer than 20 minutes that it took a couple of hours before he finally passed out. We got to Davis and went to meet the other alumni who show up for Picnic Day. Jack did very well with all the people. It wasn't until a few other dogs showed up that we had some problems...

And here comes the only bad part of the weekend. I had left for a few hours to help my friend address her wedding invitations when the other dogs showed up. I guess what happened was Jack was sleeping under one of the tables and the owner of the dogs didn't realize he was there. He woke up and they were right there in front of him in his "bubble" of space. He freaked out and started lunging at the other dogs. Adam kept them separated and when I got back to the pub, I took him over to talk with some friends. The other person came up with her dogs, Jack got freaked out and started lunging and barking, so I tried to remove him from the situation. I stepped in front of him to do so, at the exact same time he lunged at the dogs, and his teeth collided with my leg. This is my bruise from the collision. It's right behind my knee. It was an accident, and I'm glad it happened too me instead of someone else, but I'd obviously prefer it doesn't happen again in the future. Like I mentioned above, Jack is normally a very good dog, he just gets aggressive on the leash. Does anyone have any ideas about leash aggression and some tips about dealing with it? We really want to be able to take him places with us without coming home bruised or someone else getting hurt. We bought a gentle leader and are seeing how that works, but I'm open to any ideas.

Back to the good stuff. After spending all day on campus, we brought Jack over to our friends Derek and Alyssa's house. There he met his California girlfriend, Athena, who is a black lab. They played and played and played. Then our other friend, Eric, brought over his German Shepherd, Nyla. She is HUGE! The three of them chased each other around having a great time. The funniest part of the evening was when Jack started running around the couch and Nyla started chasing him. They kept running around the couch, and poor Athena was so confused and was standing in the way. Jack decided going around her was way too much work, so he jumped over the table instead. Because he is so much smaller than Nyla, and because Athena had hip dysplasia and had surgery on both hips with in the last three months, he was lapping both of them. Nyla decided she was tired of Jack lapping her, so she stopped running and stood still, basically like a brick wall and Jack was laid out! Needless to say, all three dogs were dead after all that playing!










Saturday, instead of being good Band Alumni, we all slept in and had a wonderful breakfast of pancakes, eggs, hash browns and bacon. Then we took Athena and Jack to a dog park near Derek and Alyssa's house and ran them. It was Athena's first time at a dog park, and she had a blast! Jack had a great time retrieving his ball, and Athena caught onto what she was supposed to do after watching him chase the ball and bring it back. After the dog park, we dropped the dog's off at the house and headed to campus. We ate lunch at the Memorial Union and then walked around looking at the different exhibits. Then we headed over to the Battle of the Bands and said hello to our band friends and sat on the grass to listen to them play. We even listened to 20 minutes of Beginnings (Stanford's band plays this song and it doesn't end until EVERY drummer at the battle plays a solo. It usually lasts 45 minutes or longer). After 20 minutes, we decided it was time to go to dinner and headed down to Dos Coyotes, a very popular Mexican restaurant in Davis. Afterwards, we went to Safeway and got some mixers and decided to head back to Derek and Alyssa's for some quiet time and cocktails. Nyla came over again and the dogs played until they dropped.

This morning we all slept in again (even Jack and Athena). Alyssa and I took the dogs for a walk and then Jack tried to play with Hera, the cat. Hera didn't want to play at all...I don't know why not!

Adam and I headed for home shortly afterwards. We stopped at Chipotle for some lunch and picked up some stuff for dinner at Togo's. We really enjoy both of these eateries and try to eat there every time we come to California because, of course, neither one of them have a location in Nevada. It took us a couple of hours to get home from Sacramento and we've been home for a few hours now and are enjoying just being home. That's it for this weekend. I'm sure I'll put up a post tomorrow night...Jack and I have Pet Obedience graduation tomorrow night, and I'm going to be a total proud mama and take pictures.

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone!