Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Zoo Country – great for kids and animal lovers

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I’ve just been browsing a site that I think would be perfect for kids and anyone in general who loves animals. The website is called Zoo Country and it’s chock full information and pictures of all kinds of Zoo Animals. Are you starting to see why I think kids would love this site?

It’s time to start summer vacations and I’m sure that some of you might visit cities with Zoos. Wouldn’t it be great to brush up on some interesting facts about some of the animals you might see at that zoo? Or perhaps you’ve just come back from a trip to the zoo or perhaps an exotic vacation and want to find information about that odd looking creature you saw – visit Zoo Country.

There are lots of Animal Activities and Crafts plus Animal books and toys on the site. Any of which would keep your child occupied for hours as they have fun playing games, creating an animal art project, reading an animal related book or playing with a stuffed animal toy.

I really like how they’ve organized their wild animal information and pictures. Rather than organizing the animal categories in a more traditional way they’ve arranged their animal categories based on animal characteristics like The biggest animals, the cutest animals, the ugliest animals and so on.

If you love looking at photos and reading about wild animals definitely check this site out.





Where’s the off switch on a puppy?

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Gawd … our puppy is so hyper right now and it’s almost 11:30 pm! While we were outside gardening this evening we kept her inside in her crate. Obviously that was too long cause she’s got energy to burn … and of course Chris and I are both tired after doing all that work on the yard.

Arghhhh

When we came inside and let her out of her crate she ran around the house like crazy … running low to the ground the way puppies do when they are playing. It was funny but I knew then that she’d probably be a handful for the rest of the evening.

Chris is fading fast and I’ve got work to do on the computer. This might be a long night. Now if only I can find the office supplies I bought the other day .. that would be good. I’m totally out of pens .. my husband steals them all the time.

Hopefully the puppy settles down soon. If she doesn’t I’ll see if I can summon the energy to take her out for a long walk. That might help.

We definitely have a dog that loves water!

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Grab the Photo Hunt code.
Photo Theme. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Water

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A couple of weekends ago there was an event here in Toronto called Woofstock. It’s the largest dog festival in North America.

Being new dog owners we just had to go! We knew our puppy would have a great time seeing all the other dogs and we figured we might pick up some cool items for her and perhaps even get some free promotional items (we got both).

As it turned out that was the hottest weekend we’ve had so far this month. It was about 40 Celsius (104 F) with the humidity. That was extremely hot for us and I’m sure it was even hotter for our black coated dog.

Luckily for Midnight there were lots of water bowls and water buckets around for her to drink from, however, when she dunked her whole face into a bucket we knew she must have been getting too hot. Just down the street from where she’d dunked her head in a bucket was a large fountain and other dog owners were letting their dogs go in the water. I must say the water looked murky and kind of dirty but our dog was hot so we let her jump in.

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She was much cooler after her dip in the pond. Chris was cooler too because he managed to get splashed, plus on the way back to the car there was another fountain that he and Midnight walked under. (See the first photo). Me on the other hand … I never really did have a chance to cool off so I was melting. We were at WoofStock for at least five hours and there were lots of people there enjoying the festival … all of us quite warm.

Just before we were going to leave we noticed a large pool on one of the side streets. I guess they’d used the pool to demonstrate dogs leaping off of docks. I can’t remember what that sport is called at the moment – but it’s a big water dog sport.

We were hoping that we could put Midnight in the pool but they were already draining it. She didn’t mind. She frolicked in the fast running water coming out of one of the sides of the pool.

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She even ducked her face right into the fast running water.

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I’m sure with all the pool water she managed to drink she cured any dehydration she might have suffered from due to the high heat of the day.

I’d suffered a fairly severe allergic reaction the day before to my contacts so between the heat, my puffy eyes and squinting in the sun I was happy to go home once she was done having fun in the pool water. The festival was ending at that time anyway … Chris and I are almost always the last to leave.

We’ll definitely go back to Woofstock next year. Hopefully it’s a bit cooler next time though!

BTW this is my 99th Photo Hunt post on this blog. I also sometimes do PH posts on four other blogs. I wonder how many PH posts in total I’ve done across all my blogs? 😉

My happy puppy

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Doesn’t it look like Midnight is smiling in this photo?

The other day when she was shoving her nose in her hollowed out bone I took some pictures. Naturally as soon as she noticed me with the camera she had to come and investigate.

I’ve been trying to get a shot of her Elvis look for a while. When you talk to her or ask her a question she holds her mouth in a way that makes her right lip stick up higher than her left. It really looks like an Elvis lip twitch when she does it.

So far I haven’t managed the shot because when she’s excited – like when she sees me with the camera – she starts panting so all I get are open mouth shots! Silly dog.

That reminds me – I still have to tell you about taking her to Woofstock. Man that was fun. I’ve got some great pictures of her enjoying the water too.

I need to buy my puppy a flute or a horn

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Wordless Wednesday

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Midnight loves chewing on her bone. It keeps her occupied when we’re busy or when we’re trying to watch TV.

Oddly enough she doesn’t just chew the bone. No … she sticks her nose in the hollow end and blows into it.

IMG_3887 All we can hear when she’s doing this are weird huffing, snuffling sounds. I swear she’d probably be able to make sound come out of a horn or flute if we got her one.

Of course this is the dog that also likes to play in her water by ducking her nose into it in order to blow bubbles.

Does anyone else have a dog that blows bubbles in their water dish or who sticks their nose into things – frequently?

She’s very nose oriented I guess ….

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