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It’s time to start thinking about where we’ll travel this riding season.

Steve and I are always preplanning to some extent, bouncing around ideas, making suggestions about places we might like to visit, roads we’d like to ride. But this morning when I looked at a calendar and it sunk in that it’s the last day of April, I realized it’s time to really get serious about where we’re going to go this year. And out came the maps.

We already have a few things more or less planned. We know we’re going to PEI for Atlanticade at the end of June, after which we’ll be checking out a new “find” — Steve’s discovery this time — not too far from Pictou. It sounds wonderful, so we’re pretty excited about that.

As of this morning, thanks to a Groupon offer, we know we’ll be spending a night back at the fantastic, beautiful, relaxing Milford House, hopefully this time taking the bikes instead of the car as we did last fall after Steve’s tumble. We love it there, as does Jake, so we can all look forward to that.

Our little motorcycle trio will likely be meeting our friends Heather and Dennis again in August somewhere in New England. Hmmmm, we should really start narrowing down some options there so I can start researching dog-friendly places. I heard talk of New Hampshire again and also of Vermont. There are so many choices, old favourites and new discoveries, that it’s always difficult to decide.

And dare I put it on the list again, since we didn’t get there last year? I really want to go back to Cape Breton. I want to ride the Cabot Trail again, feel the air in the mountains, see if our favourite coffee spot is still there in Baddeck, share lobster sandwiches with Jake at a picnic table while looking for whales off the coast. For some reason, I can really breathe in the Cape Breton Highlands and I want to really breathe for awhile.

Huh, it seems we maybe already have more plans than I realized. But then again there’s always more places to ride, more things to see, more RoadDog adventures on the horizon. And our RoadDog is always ready to roll.
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RoadDog rode again this weekend.

Steve and I had a very happy dog on Saturday afternoon. We had told him we were going to go riding and he seemed to grasp what we were saying by the happy smiles and twitching tail, but when he heard Steve start his bike outside the garage I thought our boy was going to lose his hairy mind.

He was “helping” me hang laundry on the clothesline from the upper deck when the pipes roared to life. He raced to the closest railing and peered down, tension in every line of his body. When he looked up and I said, “yes, we’re going,” he ran to the door. We then couldn’t get our jackets and helmets outside fast enough for him. He was all around our feet full of excitement in the entranceway.

When I opened the door of his carrier and went to pick him up, those front legs reached up and he jumped from my arms inside with a happy smile, ready to roll.

The three of us travelled the Bridgewater-Lunenburg-Mahone Bay loop, with an extra stint through Indian Point and on to Chester Basin. We then returned for another of Jake’s favourite things, after all his first day of riding for the season would not have been complete without a stop at Tims. Diet or no diet, we decided it was a two bit day and Jake happily devoured his treats on the waterfront. We took a quick stroll and then headed home.

The look on Jake’s face when we arrived home was priceless. He honestly looked euphoric. He was just so happy and I’m pretty sure Steve and I looked about the same. Here’s to the 2012 riding season — it has finally arrived.

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Our RoadDog is dog-tired today.

Jake had a busy weekend that seems to have left him worn out. And no, before you ask, we did not go riding, although we did get ready to go riding if that somehow counts for something. As bike after bike passes by on the roads, I keep trying to tell myself it does.

On Saturday afternoon, Steve and I took Jake for a walk at Miller Point. Our boy did his usual running and romping all around. Over the two-kilometre walk, we joked that Jake probably travelled closer to 10 they way he zigs and zags and scampers.

Jake then spent the remainder of the afternoon rolling in the grass, sniffing about the yard and generally overseeing our work as Steve and I cleaned our bikes. We cleaned and waxed and wiped until everything was shiny. I cleaned the seats and the saddlebags and Steve cleaned and waxed Jake’s carrier.

On Sunday, the three of us were back outside for the afternoon. Steve put the batteries back in the bikes and put the seats back on, then took the motorcycles down off their lifts. We put the saddlebags on and he installed our RoadDog carrier. We are now officially ready to ride.

We then worked in the yard for a couple of hours, with Jake continuing to keep an eye on us to make sure we raked the lawn and cleared the gardens to his exacting standards. My parents came over for their birthday dinner — Mom (who tells me she doesn’t have birthdays anymore) had some sort of a day on Wednesday and Dad had a birthday on Sunday — so all in all Jake had a very large and tiring sort of day topped off by birthday cake (well, maybe just a bit of the icing that somehow ended up on the end of my finger). By last evening, he was crashed in his bed and hardly opening an eye if we disturbed him.

Our boy was still tired this morning, but I’m thinking that will be a thing of the past tonight. I’m going to move the bike jackets, chaps and helmets downstairs to the front closet. That will wake him up and have those big, brown eyes shining.

Now we just have to hope for good weather this weekend.
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Sometimes, when you have a rough-and-tumble boy dog, you have to make allowances. Sometimes, you even have to get a little bit creative.

I’ll explain.

I’ve often written about Jake’s indoor toys and about him playing with snowballs and pieces of ice outside, but our RoadDog has a couple of outdoor toys too (other than the ill-fated soccer ball that never made it outside a few weeks ago). He has a favourite outdoor toy that he’s had for several years now and he’s recently decided to play with it … a lot. He and I chase around the yard with it, pull it, shake it and generally have fun with it.

It’s actually kind of an odd toy. I have no idea where it came from and I’ve never managed to find another one, which becomes relevant later in my tale. It’s a small rubber ball that looks like a soccer ball, maybe five or six inches in diameter, and it has a small towel through it. Yep, right through it, sticking out both sides.

Jake loves to run with it in his mouth and shake it, then he’ll pull at the towel with his teeth while holding it down with his front paws, then he’ll shake it again. I’ll grab an end and we’ll both pull on it and, no, I’ve never found that tugging games make him more aggressive. It just helps him burn some of that terrier energy. And, frankly, shaking and ripping at that towel also helps burn off some of that terrier terror — the urge to destroy. It works out well for both of us.

The problem is, as you can imagine, all that pulling and shaking and the subsequent washing, left that poor beleaguered toy looking worse for wear. Then, over the weekend, a bad thing happened. One end of the towel just kind of shredded, which Jake thought was fantastic. He stopped playing immediately and strutted around the yard with a piece of red towel in his mouth, very, very proud of his accomplishment.

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But it left the toy pretty much done, which left me with a problem. Then I decided I could replace the towel and set about doing just that. I cut away the remaining glue holding what was left of the towel in place, twisted and twisted and twisted the new towel into the ball, then pushed it out the other side with a knitting needle and, ta da, the toy was as good as new. Jake watched the whole procedure with some trepidation, but was quite delighted with the result.

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We were back outside tugging on that toy in moments. Plus now I know I can fix it.

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It’s time for another one of my confessions … it’s possible I spoiled Jake just a little again recently, although this time I wasn’t alone. Steve was there to help.

There’s a new pet store in town and I love it. It could not have opened at a better time. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed shopping at our previous store, at least I did until a recent encounter of the scaly kind on the check-out counter. Seriously! And this thing was big!

That left me with two choices — I could ask Steve to do Jake’s shopping or I could buy on-line. I support local business as much as possible, so the arrival of the new store was perfectly timed. And it’s wonderful.

It sells Jake’s favourite staple foods and treats, along with lots of other treats and foods that are corn and wheat free. (Our boy can’t eat corn and wheat seems to increase his ear issues.) It was like a shopping paradise when almost everything I picked up would have been okay for Jake to eat.

We were well stocked on treats at the time, but we did pick up two new kinds of food for our boy to try. He was crazy for the first one which is chicken and salmon in some sort of pumpkin soup with other veggies. Honestly, it looked good enough to eat, which made me happy and he absolutely devoured it and came back looking for more. I will definitely be buying more of that in the near future.

That wasn’t so much the spoiling part though. We also bought him new dishes. The store had this really cute bone-shaped bowl holder (and a fish for cats) which we couldn’t resist. The rubber around the bottom of Jake’s old bowl was tearing away (which Steve told me, I admit I hadn’t noticed), so the timing was good on that too.

The last purchase, I admit, was totally my doing. I couldn’t resist. Our RoadDog hasn’t had a new toy since Christmas, I’ve been cutting back on his food and treats (which I can assure you he does not appreciate) and the Timbits have been few and far between as we attempt to help him drop a couple of pounds. When I saw they had stuffed Angry Bird toys, I was tempted. When I heard the great noises they make instead of the usual squeakers, I couldn’t resist.

Jake likes his new dishes because, of course, we put food and water in them. But he loves his new Angry Bird. It’s his new favourite toy.

Angry Bird equals happy dog.

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