Peaches and Bubba had an exciting weekend! Yesterday they had a playdate with Todd, the neighbor's Sheltie. Todd is closer in age to Peaches, so I thought it might be good to have him come visit and play with her. I think Peaches is in love! She was flirting with Todd (both are altered), and they chased each other all over the front courtyard until they exhausted themselves. Even Bubba was getting in on the excitement, barking and playing. Peaches was barking that husky bark of hers. What a big bark for such a little dog. It's so cute how she's discovered her voice. Finally, after about an hour, Todd decided he'd had enough and wanted to go home, but when I took him out of the courtyard and tried to walk him back across the street, Peaches started to cry. Since it was nearly walkies time, we decided to take Todd along with us. They all liked that. It was fun having a dog pack for the afternoon.

Today we took Bubba and Peaches over to the new dog park not far from where we live. Granite Park has been around a few months, but we've never taken our dogs over there until today. We couldn't when we had Daisy because she was too antisocial and unpredictable. I wasn't sure how it would work with Bubba, either, because he hadn't done too well when we took him to another dog park after Daisy was gone. I still think it was because he was upset about her passing. Today, he did great, though. He was having a wonderful time socializing with all the other dogs. His tail was spinning in circles like a helicopter blade, like it does when he really likes another dog. He was really into the dog park experience. Peaches, on the other hand, didn't handle it as well as I thought she might. She really likes other dogs but does better when it's one-on-one. That many dogs coming at her, and many that were bigger than her, was just too overwhelming. They really needed a separate area for smaller and shyer dogs, like the other dog park has. That way the big dogs don't overpower the little ones. They can get pretty boisterous sometimes, and I always worry that some fool will bring a dog in that shouldn't be around other dogs at all. There have been disastrous incidents in dog parks with pit bulls and other aggressive dogs, and I'd hate for that to happen to my doggies. I kind of scoped out what breeds of dogs were there today, though, before taking my dogs inside the area. There was a bloodhound there. I've never seen one up close. Quite impressive! The park is not huge, barely two acres in size. Today being a holiday, there were a lot of dogs there. That can get pretty crowded. At least everyone was conscientious about scooping the poop. It's amazing to me that city the size of Sacramento, the capital of California, has so few off-leash areas for dogs and their owners to gather. We still have a ways to go to be considered dog friendly.