Becoming Dog People and the Peculiarities of Dog Park Culture

August 10, 2011 in Personal

Now that we had a dog in the family, we were excited to do what dog people do, like go to the dog park, eat at pet-friendly restaurants and enjoy the general camaraderie of other responsible dog owners with poop bags at ready. Even before we adopted Gianna and were just walking her around the adoption event, other people gave us the look like, "You're one of us." How exciting.

Like babies learning to walk, we were learning and trying to be dog people by observation, and we took our first steps the day after we adopted Gianna. We went to our regular breakfast place, Shakabrah, and tied Gianna up to the bike racks outside, just like dog people do. She did great. Encouraged by our success, we took her to the pet store (she's picky about food), Chamber's Bay for lunch and off to Fort Steilacoom dog park to see how she'd do off leash.

I was a little nervous about removing the leash, an umbilical cord of assurance, at the 22-acre park. Again, she did great. We walked the perimeter and greeted a lot of dogs. She never strayed beyond 20 yards and always looked back to check where we were. We played fetch with the ball and she was awesome, catching and retrieving and weaving through distractions back and forth, back and forth. She made us look good. We hadn't trained her, we just took credit for it.

While Gianna was a rock star, and the other dogs we encountered were all friendly, their owners were another story.

People were having parties and breed club meetings at the dog park. For the size of the park, it was quite clean and well-maintained, thanks to responsible dog owners and the sheer mass of the place that no municipality of dog crap could cover otherwise. But having a human social party there? Weird. Most people kept to themselves, as I would imagine, but there were times when Gianna would go to greet another dog, ass-to-nose, and me and/or Amanda would have to make small talk with the owners. Conversation would consist of identifying everything having to do with our dog or theirs -- name, age, ownership duration, favorite games, etc. We'd never catch or share information about ourselves, and that was fine. We were there for the dogs.

That was until we ran into a family with their own family of dogs that descended on us in some Shock and Awe campaign of fur and fury. We were keeping to ourselves and Gianna had taken a water break when they arrived. The five or six dogs took over the portable water bowl. The matriarch tried having a personal (gasp!) conversation with us, distracting us from her dogs stealing Gianna's water.

AND THEN, AND THEN, SHE HAD THE NERVE TO TAKE OUT HER WATER BOTTLE AND REFILL OUR DOG'S WATER BOWL WITH MORE WATER FOR HER DOGS TO CONTINUE TO DRINK OUT OF. NOT JUST THAT, SHE FILLED IT TWICE! ANARCHY! FOR SHAME!

You want to know why London is burning? That was the moment. Poor Gianna had to wait at the back of the line just to get back to her own water bowl. We were really done with the dog park just before the family of vultures arrived, and we waited 15 minutes for them to prey on the next folks down the trail. Fifteen minutes of watching her dogs drink, 15 painful minutes of small talk.

All in all, the dog park was a good place considering the experience we were able to have learning and trusting our dog. But some of those people... some of those people should stay on leash.

The Story of How We Adopted Gianna

August 09, 2011 in Personal

As I mentioned previously, we've been on the hunt for a dog.

I've probably been in the market for a dog since we lost Maxamillion to Nina's thong. Wherever I've lived since graduating college - Bellingham, Seattle, Tacoma - the local humane society has been on my short list of frequently visited websites.

That's why I didn't think too seriously about getting a dog this past Saturday when we attended Woofstock, an animal adoption event/concert at the University of Puget Sound. In fact, we rode our bikes to the event.

We strolled past the many cages on the field and saw a lot of great dogs. Below all the small, cute puppies, I spotted a dog with strikingly bright, blue eyes. I walked around the cage a few times and looked at her, a Border Collie. Despite all the chaos and noise and yelping at the event, she was totally calm.

Still, there were plenty of cages and booths to see, and we had rode our bikes to the event. We were not picking up a dog. We had Seafair plans and a party in West Seattle that night. Too much going on.

We looked at some other great-looking dogs, but I was compelled to come back to the blue-eyed dog. This time, the rep from the Wenatchee Humane Society asked if I wanted to walk her, take her for a test drive. As we walked away from the tent, the dog was totally attentive, which was surprising considering all the distractions that hardly allowed Amanda and I to hold a conversation. We stopped at a clean patch of grass and the dog immediately dug her snout into my chest and stayed there, saying "Love me!" Then she rolled over on her back and Amanda and I accepted the invitation to give her a solid belly rub. It was probably her first in awhile, at least since she'd made the trip from Eastern Washington, and perhaps the first since she arrived at the shelter a few weeks earlier.

Needless to say, we fell for the dog pretty hard right then and were taken aback by how affectionate she was. We walked her back to the tent and tried taking out another dog, just to see if we'd get the same response. We didn't. The other dog, a white Aussie Shepard, paid no attention to us as we walked her and could care less that we were there. Maybe he needed to be fixed. He wasn't fixed on us.

So we took the blue-eyed Border Collie back out for another round, and I knew then that we'd be adopting her. Amanda teared up a little after learning that she just turned 6 years old in July. The idea of adopting an older dog is just a little sad sometimes, but she had such a great personality and temperment, we were stoked that she was available at all. I signed papers for her, spent a ridiculously low $150 and walked away with "Sky," her shelter name, which we demoted for a middle name. We renamed her Gianna, which was something that just popped into my head at the time. I later found the meaning to be "God is gracious," and that seemed appropriate.

Now, you recall that Amanda and I rode bikes to the event. This was the point in time when that came around to bite us in the ass. For as good as Gianna was on the leash, I walked the longest eight blocks of my life trying to keep the dog going the right direction with my left hand while balancing the bike as I walked with my right. So awkward, kind of funny. We finally arrived at home and let Gianna roam. We also shortly thereafter had that "Oh crap" moment when we realized that we didn't have any basic gear for a dog. After another $150 on toys, food, a bed and other necessities at TJ Maxx, Petsmart and Mud Bay, we were in decent shape.

We learned two important qualities about Gianna that first day: First, she is insane about tennis balls. She has to have one, or she's looking for one. I took her off leash at the local elementary that first afternoon and she played fetch well, sprinting like a mad woman after each ball and obediently dropping the ball at my feet upon return. It was fun; I just didn't realize that we'd have to make this event a 2-3x daily thing. Second, the dog has hops. We attended the party in West Seattle that night, and we "thought" we enclosed her in the kitchen by placing our marble butcher table, 4 feet tall and 3 feet deep, as a blockade between the kitchen and the rest of the house. We got home that night and Gianna was on the other side of the table. Either she had played David Copperfield or she has some springs in those legs.

One of my favorite parts of adopting Gianna was surprising her on Sergio. He had a busy weekend, shooting three weddings or three consecutive days. He knew we were considering getting a dog, but he obviously didn't know he'd come home to one. When he arrived late Sunday night, he was totally shocked to find his new roommate waiting for him when unloaded his gear in the kitchen. Speaking of roommates, there's one more that has probably had the roughest transition to Gianna's homecoming, and he deserves his own words on the topic.

The New Schedule Physical Challenge

August 05, 2011 in Personal

Remember those old Double Dare physical challenges? First off, why did they call them "physical challenges"? I always thought it was obvious that the challenge would be physical. Nickelodeon wasn't all that great with branding games.

My new work schedule has become a physical challenge especially considering we're a one-car household. Amanda wins the coin toss for the keys with her commute to Seattle.

I have two ways to get to work now -- by walking 20 minutes or by busing 5 minutes. Before continuing, let's all close our eyes and take a deep breath. On the exhale, think about how happy Paolo is about these options compared to the previous 90 minute commute. Isn't that nice? Like yoga for the mind.

Neither option is all that bad, but the bus will become more preferable as the weather turns in a couple months. The real challenge is the timing. The buses come every 20 minutes, so if I just miss one -- and I have already -- I'm torn between waiting for the next boss or getting to walking and being home in the same amount of time. With the new dress code, shoes have definitely come into play, and while I think my dress shoes are comfortable for the office, they haven't passed the 4-mile roundtrip walking test.

I've also opted to adjust my work hours slightly. I'm still getting up with Amanda at 5:45 a.m., and I twiddled my thumbs the first couple days waiting for 8:10 a.m. to arrive so that I could get to work by 8:30 a.m. Now I'm leaving more like 7:40 to get to work by 8 a.m. so that I can leave work by 4:30 and get home just before 5 p.m. To that point, being in my own home by 5 p.m. on a weekday is like living in an alternate reality. Still getting used to that and what to do with my time. Speaking of, I have a bus to catch.

Now, enjoy the genius that is all-star TV host Marc Summers tossing these kids around the obstacle course. So much humor, so much liability.

The Great Surprise Oregon Weekend

July 25, 2011 in Personal

I have such mad game that I surprise myself sometimes. Awhile back, I made plans for a secret trip to Portland and the Oregon coast that I'd spring on Amanda. I arranged with her employers to get a Friday off without her knowing. To get her to pack for the trip, I first let her know that we'd be going camping for the weekend on a Thursday night.

The real surprise, of course, was that she wasn't going to work at all on Friday. We got ready for work like usual, but instead of driving north on I-5, I went south. Amanda was totally shocked. I'd share the video of her realizing the trip, but Amanda didn't have make-up on at that time in the morning, so she'd kill me if I shared it here. I'm learning this husband business afterall.

We had an amazing weekend and the weather mostly cooperated. Here's the pictorial.

Hooray! We're in Portland (Friday morning).

Breakfast at Mother's Bistro.

Next, we went to the Rose Garden. We used Google Maps to get there, which took us to where the Trailblazers play. We eventually figured it out.

A woman who looked JUST like the star of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (Amanda swears it was her) flagged us over to take a picture of this dragonfly. The dragonfly remained still. The woman disappeared.

Next up, the Japanese Garden.

Paying my respect to the Timbers.

using this credit card

We bought a couple books at Powell's, or approximately 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 of its inventory.

I just thought this looked cool.

We spent most of the evening at McMenamin's Kennedy School -- an old elementary schoolhouse converted into a swanky hotel, complete with bars, movie theater, restaurants and a saltwater bathing pool. Sorry there aren't more pictures. We were only there in the evening and were half-naked most of the time. It's OK. We're married.

On Saturday morning, we went to the infamous Voodoo Donuts. This was the line around the corner.

We turned the corner and went to the Portland Saturday Market.

Per Moos' advice, we made a lunch stop at Por que no? Muy bueno!

We walked around the Mississippi neighborhood and Amanda enjoyed a hippie nursery where chickens roamed freely.

After the stroll, we hopped in the car for a few-hour drive to our campground at Nehalem Bay State Park. Here's the video from a very curvy Highway 53.

We almost didn't go because of the weather. The forecast called for a 70 percent chance of rain. We made a stop at Home Depot on the way, grabbed some tents and went for it. I'm so glad we did. The beach was incredible!

Like I said, tarp and tent. I felt like I was a little kid building a fort.

And more beach time.

This is the time where I call out Amanda for always being too rough with pulling up her jeans, to the point of ripping the tag.

Dinner time.

On Sunday morning, we packed up and drove north to Cannon Beach.

The weather didn't cooperate, but we made the most of it.

Amanda realized that our route home went through Astoria, where Goonies was filmed. I think I've watch the movie twice and Amanda revealed that she has seen the movie 12x more than I have. Needless to say, we made a stop.