Who said PINK is Girlie?

Sophie loves her pink tennis ball. She's obsessed with her pink ball. It's the one ball she never loses, at least not for very long. When she does lose it, she finds it again. She's had it for months ... at least 9 of them. I suspect she dreams about the pink ball and can barely get through a day without at least a good 5 minute chew on it.

This particular pink tennis ball was part of a fundraising campaign for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which I am beginning to think might be a sad irony.

When Sophie chews on the pink tennis ball, which she is apt to do as opposed to say, dropping it at my feet so I can throw it again, it leaches pink dye and the fur around her lips and the snow beneath her take on a distinctive pinkish hue. Now, I'm sure that Wilson's, the manufacturers of this particular pink tennis ball, apart from raising funds and awareness for breast cancer, intended the ball to be paddled (?) about a tennis court rather than used as a gum massager for a lab X with OCD. But I'm becoming increasingly concerned about what the pink dye is doing to my beast. Can dogs get breast cancer??

The Perils of Being a Dog

Sophie is out with an injury and I, her owner, have had to take over her blog. She's actually had a string of injuries over the last few days.

Last week, we got a fresh batch of snow. It was lovely and she's been rolling in the stuff non-stop. But under that snow is hard, cold, sharp ice -- ice with jagged peaks and deep crevices. It's dangerous stuff. Every day Sophie comes home with a new injury. First, she split her claw. Then she ripped one her pads. Neither of these produces a small amount of blood and just as I was getting accustomed to dragging my bleeding beast home, she had her worst accident yet.

Sophie has a tendency to dive bomb the tennis ball, especially if she's competing for it with another dog. Usually, she just gets a snow packed face, but not this time. This time, she cut her eye. Not her actual beautiful eye ball, but close enough. Of course, she barely noticed the blood seaping into her eye and joyously came romping back to me. When your dog runs toward you with a face covered in blood, it's a bit scary. Not "horror movie" scary, but "oh my god my dog lost an eye" scary. I couldn't believe how much she was bleeding. Even in the minus 8 million degrees, it just kept flowing.

I rushed home with her. We got some suspicious looks all the way across the park, as if I had beaten her with a stick or some other dog had roughed her up. And I think Sophie secretly likes the tough girl personae. She certainly seemed to play it up as we passed the outdoor hockey rinks.

I cleaned up her wound and dabbed it with polysporin. It continued to bleed for quite awhile, but as you can see in the photo above, it was just a little cut. I'm sure Sophie thought it hardly worthy of the trouble and could she possibly lick her eye, would have taken care of it herself.

My dog is beginning to look like she's been in a bar brawl.

Portugal or bust

This afternoon, I met up with Felix, a Portuguese Water Dog in my dog park. He's very young and loves to run for the ball.

This is also Felix and also a Portuguese Water Dog. I've never actually met him, but my person knows him very well. He lives in NYC.

You probably think this is me, but it's not. This is my friend Pondu, who came to visit one night. She's much blonder than me and if you look closely at Pondu and then at my picture, you will see that my nose is pink and I always wear pink eyeliner. And my eyes are amber and match my ears perfectly.

This is my park, also known as my front yard, in the winter. It looks more inviting in the summer, but that's really only an illusion. There's no snow to roll in during the summer.







This is my front yard in the Fall.
It looks a lot like this in the summer.

Welcome to my world.
I am the Queen.

Here you can experience the beautiful Plateau Mont-Royal, the best neighbourhood in all of Montreal. I live by a park with a fantastic area just for dogs. There are usually a lot of people hanging around too, but we tolerate them --- as long as they throw balls for us. I spend most of my time on the Plateau in this park.

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I spent the day watching Olympics -- am so impressed and exhausted from cheering for those Canadian speed skaters that I had to go rest up on the Olympic rug in the dining room (as pictured above).

I was out a couple of times, but it's very cold and my person couldn't take it. I did get to run a bit and even found the pink tennis ball I lost in the snow last night! I saw Cha Cha and Platon this afternoon. Cha Cha is a Jack Russel crossed with something tall. She's really cute and sweet and I've always gotten along well with her. Platon is a schnauzer. I usually attack schauzners, big or small, but I really like Platon. I even had a big, big play with her the other night. She's a feisty little thing. There was a 5 month old Great Dane there today. I'd never met him before, nor the two Weimaraners that showed up. Paco was there too. Not the little pure white jack Pako, but the big black lab X Paco. I'll try to get some pictures next time. It was definitely too cold for camera batteries today.