The weather finally warmed up enough over the weekend and today that we were able to take our puppy to the park for the first time.

We’ve had her since the end of November but because she still had two sets of shots and a rabies vaccination to get we weren’t officially able to take her to parks or other places frequented by a lot of dogs until about a week ago. Trouble was we were in a deep freeze here in Toronto when we first would have been able to take her to the park that I can see from my front door!

Sunday evening, after a busy day, we brought her to the park. We’d wanted to get a long lead but given how she still likes to taste everything that crosses her path we decided to take her to the park on her normal 6 foot leash.

She loved the park! Her nose was down to the ground most of the time as she smelled all the others dogs that had been there previously.

We met a couple of other dogs and their owners too.

After we left the park we realized that her leash had actually broken. The rivets that held the handle together had fallen out! All four of them! We also noticed that the little plastic trash can that holds the poop bags was missing.

Around that time we heard a man coming. He was calling out a name, lets say it was “Morty” … he was yelling “Morty get over here” … “Here” … “come here!” As he staggered along. We looked up and saw quite a large dog heading our way. It stayed away from us as it was just walking peacefully to the park it’s leash dragging behind it, as it ignored his probably drunk owner.

We waited for the man and dog to pass and then headed back to the park. The man and loose dog made us nervous. Our puppy is small and Chris is actually a little bit afraid of strange dogs. Never the less Chris went into the park while I waited outside the fence. We figured it would be safer to keep our puppy away from the loose dog.

Chris ended up having a very strange conversation with the drunk or maybe schizo man. The man really made Chris nervous and I was getting weird vibes from him too.

Chris came out of the park and we walked to another entrance. We then tried to retrace our previous path to try to find our poopy bag container. We found it way on the other side of the park where I thought it would be. Where we should have walked in the first place but the weird man with the loose dog was in that area so we retraced our steps from the beginning.

The next day we went to Petsmart to return the broken leash that we’d only had for about three weeks. We also returned a few other items like treats that we’d given to our puppy that had given her diarrhea. She’s got a very sensitive tummy! With our refund we got a new leash and a 30 foot lead.

We figured what the heck. She didn’t try to pick up anything in her mouth while in the park the night before as she was too busy smelling everything and or playing with other dogs. So on Monday we took her to the park on the long lead and she had a BALL.

That night she met a dog named Cooper … a mix that looked like it might have had a bit of Golden Retriever in it, and a Black Great Dane called Luna. The Great Dane was only 7 months old. We have two Great Danes in our Puppy class that are supposed to be about 5 months old and both are huge compared to the 7 month old that we met last night.

Anyway, we had fun and going to the park will become a regular part, hopefully, of each day. At least one walk will be to the park … well unless it’s freezing cold out!