walking at Yarra Bend on a lovely Spring day
When I arrived home this afternoon I was told that Penny had gone to Yarra Bend Park with one of her humans, so I jumped in my car to join them.
I parked partway along the path I thought they would take, and had the pleasure of seeing Penny realise I had arrived. Watching her race towards me was pure joy!



After walking on the flat for a while, we headed up a hill, which is good exercise for Penny to strengthen her left rear leg, the one that was operated on for a cruciate tear, almost exactly a year ago.



There were birds perched on a rock half-way up the hill, but they didn't seem to mind us walking towards them, until we got too close.





Walking past one of the eucalypts, we had a lesson in why the Australian bush burns so well. Just look at all those strips of flammable bark hanging down. Eucalypts need to burn to regenerate, and the strips of bark have the effect of allowing a grass fire to run up them and set the foliage on fire. (I'm not quite clear about this process, but I do make a point of clearing away all the hanging bark at my place in the hills.)



By the time we arrived back at the cars, nature had turned on a gorgeous sunset to make our walk complete.

Japanese discount store treasures for dogs
A new Japanese discount store called Tokuya has opened near us, and it's quite an adventure to shop there, because all the packaging is in Japanese. A friend and I came away with a collection of 'treasures' this afternoon - some of my items were dog-related, of course, or I wouldn't be writing about them here, lol. Their website is also a treasure trove - of hilarious English. But who am I to laugh, when I can't speak more than one word of Japanese? Well, maybe two, with awful pronunciation...

Anyway, back to the dog-related goods.



The first one is what I guessed to be plastic spikes to place around seedlings so Penny won't walk on them. Wonderful!



Great packaging - the message is clear. (I think...)
Here they are in position.



Next was the cutest little freezer-pack, just right for keeping Penny's treats cool in summer when I'm using the great little Black Dog treat pouch.





The third is an expanding pole. I guess it's for hanging things in a small space. But it will make a good target stick.

We tried it out in the backyard. The sticks come in lots of lengths. This was the smallest, I think. (Please excuse the terrible dog-handling technique. I can see I'm out of practice. We'd better start doing some targeting once more.)

Penny has been clipped for the first time

In seven years of life, Penny has been groomed quite a few times, but we have never gathered the courage to allow the groomer to clip her. However, she is going for a holiday soon (more about that in a future post) and we think there might be paralysis ticks in the area, so we thought we should get her clipped to make it easier to check her each evening for ticks.

When I picked her up, I wondered who the beautiful stranger was. She looked gorgeous. Here she is at home, perhaps giving me 'the look' because she wasn't too pleased about having to visit the groomers. (Lovely ladies with a pleasingly professional attitude - I'm very happy that we've found this place. It's Hot Doggie in Warrandyte.)



First item on her agenda was to get herself nicely mussed up, so it was out to her favorite rubbing seat. (It used to be for humans to relax in the outdoors. When did it become Penny's seat?)



What a surprise! Penny is dark in some spots. Now that we can see her coloring more clearly, we are reminded that her brother was black.