Wednesday afternoon, we took Cobalt out to Humber Bay Park, a park built on landfill around the mouth of Mimico Creek. It's a nice walk, with a good view of the city -- and lots of swans, geese, red-wing blackbirds, and many other birds (in the fall it's also a Monarch Butterfly migration stop). Cobalt loved the birds -- she wanted to chase after all of them, and even herded a couple of geese into the water. All in all, though, we prefer to keep her away from the geese -- those birds can be nasty.
Thursday was off with a flying start, literally. I got Cobalt up and took her outside, as usual, but when I tried to bring her back to the office for her breakfast, she decided instead to run upstairs, leap onto the bed, and jump on L, who had been sound asleep. No injuries, fortunately, and it was very cute, so we let her get away with it. Now, it's standard procedure for weekends.
She was obviously feeling pretty lively, so we took her out to the Western Beaches (officially known as Sir Casimir Gzowski Park), just east of Humber Bay Park (across the Humber River footbridge). The Western Beaches have a new boardwalk, which is great for walking dogs. The water birds were a big distraction, though. At one point she spotted a bunch of gulls on the beach, and charged for them (she was on the flexi-leash, so she had a fair bit of freedom). She scattered the lot of them, and they flew out to the breakwater offshore where things were quieter. Cobalt ended up at the edge of the water, where she was muttering at the gulls, but as soon as we caught up to her -- and she had slack on the flexi again -- she decided to run out across the water at the gulls.
She got about three jumps from us before she realized that she was up to her shoulders in water.
She immediately turned tail (well, tail-stub) and bolted back to us, but we were laughing to hard to really offer much comfort to her.
Fortunately, she's a wash-and-wear dog, and in a few minutes, she was back to normal.
Saturday, we decided to try visiting more of the official off-leash parks in Toronto. Out of curiousity, I suggested Woburn Park, one of the few parks listed as being fenced-in. I wanted to see how it compared to the Dogpark at the Brick Works.
Unfortunately, when we got there, it turned out to be very unappealing. A small, muddy triangle, only a fraction of the size of the Brick Works park, with a fence that someone seems to have driven through on one side, patched with snow-fence. We decided against it immediately.
L suggested going to "the formal gardens" that aren't too far away, so I gave her directions to Alexander Muir Gardens at Yonge and Lawrence. It turned out that that wasn't what she meant: she was thinking of Edwards Gardens, at Leslie and Lawrence. But I remembered an off-leash area near Alexander Muir, so we decided to try that.
It ended up being a long walk -- the dog park was at Sherwood Park, on the other side of Mt. Pleasant Road. Unlike the dog parks we'd been to so far, it wasn't just a grassy (or muddy ) corner of a standard city park, or a clear field, but a set of paths in a forested area. The paths were fenced, and the woods between the paths are part of a wildlife reclamation project.
One nice thing about Sherwood is, thanks to the tree cover and the mulch-covered paths, it's not at all muddy. A great change from the other parks we'd been too!
Sherwood Park Off-Leash
Cobalt on a path in Sherwood Park
At Sherwood Park, Cobalt met Dexter, a friendly and bouncy pup who was more than happy to chase and wrestle. They were rather hard to photograph together -- too fast!
Cobalt and Dexter
Zoom!
We also met another miniature Aussie -- Ozzy the Aussie, a black tri-coluor from Skoachs in Kingston:
Ozzy the Aussie
By the end of the day, Cobalt was reduced to this:
Tired Pup
One last installment to come...
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