I and Love and You #chewyinfluencer

This month, we had the pleasure once again of working with Chewy by reviewing an item from their site. Our pick this month was a three pack of I and Love and You treats.

We did receive these items in exchange for our honest review, but we were not compensated in any other way.

The item description does say it is three bags of jerky treats, however, we received two bags of jerky treats and one back of Fresh All Rover Breath Bones. This appears to have replaced the Beef and Lamb recipe jerky treats that the description included.

Despite the substitution, the dogs really enjoyed these treats. The Breath Bones were actually quite the hit with all three dogs- with a bag of three bones, each dog got to try one. Ptera had hers at work for her afternoon snack, so no pictures of her enjoying it.

The jerky treats were also a big hit. They are easy to break into smaller pieces, and not crumbly, which I really like. The pieces they come in are pretty big, and I broke them into quarters for the most part.

The bags themselves all had some issues ripping open, where they didn't rip down far enough for me to actually open the bag without needing scissors. But, I think that may be something of a personal problem. And it isn't hard to grab a pair of scissors to open the bags if needed (or even just be careful when opening the bag to rip down far enough).

Overall, the dogs were a big fan of these, and I think they are a great addition, both as a chew treat for the breath bones, and as training treats for the jerky.

An Afternoon on the River

We spent Saturday afternoon on the SUP, with my mom and grandma in kayaks. Koira stayed at home, because she is loud and pushy and not super fun to have along for most people (though I love how much she enjoys it).

Flight is finally getting more used to the SUP and getting pretty confident on it. He even jumped off on purpose twice, to go visit my mom in her kayak.

There were a ton of birds on the river. We saw many blue herons, and osprey, as well as king fishers and some other birds. And ducks, of course, which Ptera really wanted to go chase, but she restrained herself.

The day was beautiful, warm enough to be fun, but not hot. There was a bit of smoke, but not nearly as bad as what was here last week, so we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.

The water sports season is fast coming to an end, and, like every year, I am realizing we didn't get out nearly enough.

Kinsol Trestle Hike- The Non-Trestle Part

The Kinsol Trestle hike we went on this past weekend is gorgeous, and gives some great views of a very impressive wooden trestle. But it also has some short but beautiful trails through the forest near the trestle as well.

Dogs on a log

This is the little trail that wound down to the base of the trestle and the gorgeous little stream down below.

I had a more noble looking photo, but the silly grin fits him

I would say, if you make it out for this hike, it would be a shame to not hike down to the river while you are there. I am sure on hot days the river is likely busy, but there are quite a few semi-accessible spots (trails are steep to get to the river itself, so not suitable if you aren't able to do a bit of a scramble).

Posing in a sunbeam

The river itself is beautiful. Very Pacific-northwest with the deep greens and variety of mosses and ferns.

The river pool

The dogs enjoyed an opportunity to cool off and play around on shore for a bit before we headed back to the car.

Wading pool

Hiking the Kinsol Trestle, Vancouver Island, BC

Kinsol Trestle

This past weekend involved a trip up to Vancouver Island, British Columbia for a flyball tournament. My original plan involved going up a few days early and staying an extra day or two, and spending that time hiking on the island.

Unfortunately, that didn't end up working out, and I went up on Friday, arriving late in the evening, and took the last ferry home on Sunday (arriving home a little after 4 am on Monday morning).

Trail head signpost 

With that, we did manage to get in one hike on Saturday afternoon after racing was done for the day. Just a 15 or so minute drive from the flyball venue is a rather famous hike to the Kinsol Trestle, which is a very old wooden railroad trestle bridge, which has been converted to a walking trail. The curve of the bridge, as well as the size, makes it unique.

On the bridge. 

The hike is only about 1 km from the parking lot to the bridge, and it is relatively flat, and a very smooth, wide path. The hike is very easy, though you can add length by hiking further along the trail past the trestle or by doing what we did, which is take the steep, winding path below the trestle down to the river.

Part way to the river

The bridge railings were offset somewhat from the actual surface of the bridge, which made it too dangerous to try to get the dogs anywhere near the railing. Large dogs would be less of a concern, but the gap was certainly large enough that Ptera could fall through. The on the bridge section of this was absolutely leashes required.

Love the curve of the trestle

Once we were on the path headed under the bridge to the river, there were fewer people. The path winds back and forth through the forest on either side of the bridge, going under the bridge in two different places with picnic tables set up for a lunch.

If you zoom in on this photo, you can see the cobwebs on Ptera's head

I wanted to try to get some photos of Ptera with the bridge that showed the wooden construction as well as the size and scale of the bridge. Ptera is only 10 lbs, so you can get an idea of how massive this bridge is.

With the cement base of the trestle

If you make it to this hike, I do recommend taking the path down to the river if you can, as it is gorgeous, and offers great opportunities for photos.

Blue sky peaking through

Obviously the trestle is not for climbing on, and signs will remind you not to climb on the trestle at regular intervals. Ptera was never far above the ground and was always placed carefully on her perch until she felt solid.

Really, really tall

In the end, this ended up being a great hike. If I only did one for the weekend, this was a good choice.

At the river

Paleoterrorist No Fly List RATI MBDX FMX TKA URO1

Ptera and I attended our first Rally Obedience trial this past weekend. It was somewhat spur of the moment, as a friend shared the event on Tuesday and I realized they had day-of entries available. It was a UKC trial, which is not something I had considered really, but UKC allows you to get a Temporary Listing number and use that to enter shows, so I sent them $20 and got a TL texted to my phone and away we went.

Bling

No use being secretive or trying to build up suspense, since this photo will be the first thing you see.

Basically, Ptera blew me away. I went to this trial with the expectation that we may or may not Q, but that it would show us where the holes in our training are and what we need to work on for next time. I only even planned on going up on Saturday for the two trials, assuming we wouldn't do well enough that I would want to come back Sunday.

Happy dog!

This is the part where people tell me to trust my dog and our training a little more!

We entered Rally Obedience 1 A for both the morning and afternoon trials on Saturday. Since I have never handled a dog to a Rally or Obedience title of any kind, we are in the A class. B class is for handlers with experience. In UKC, there are three levels of difficulty, 1, 2, and 3. Once you have three qualifying scores in a level, you can move up to the next and you earn a title. Once you earn three Qs in level 3, you get new titles by getting points/double Qs, some complicated formula that I haven't looked at much. In Rally, the score is out of 100, with 100 being a perfect score, and 70 being the minimum passing score.

Ptera is fabulous, and our morning run earned us a 99, followed by a perfect 100 that afternoon! We finished up our URO1 title the following morning (because we had to go back for the second day after that first day!) with a 97. And then rocked her first Rally 2 run with another 97.

I love her smug little "yeah, so?" look here

We did take first place in our class each time, so came home with four Qualifying ribbons and four First place ribbons. The club sadly did not have any New Title ribbons (I think I heard someone say they had run out and would get some eventually, so hopefully at the next trial), but I think we got plenty of swag.

As the final topper to the weekend, while we missed out on High in Trial over the weekend, we did get Highest Aggregate. Which means of the dogs entered in all four trials over the weekend, we had the highest accumulative score. For this, we got a super nifty UKC HIT bracelet that is being added to our ribbon wall!

Wearing her Highest Aggregate prize 

And, even bigger than the ribbons and the scores and the titles, we had a great time. I think Ptera enjoyed herself, and I know I did. This UKC trial was the perfect atmosphere to debut in Rally. I had a friend there who helped even beforehand with all of my questions, and who videoed our runs all weekend (even after she was done running her own dogs for the day). The other competitors were super nice and welcoming, and the judges were great. The feedback about where we lost the points we lost was great, and will help us as we continue with our training. This club puts on three trials a year, with the next one in October, and I am already planning on going to the next one if I can swing it at all.

New title for the tiny dog!

This weekend also represented a long term goal of mine, which was to put an obedience title on a flyball dog. I know there are plenty of flyball dogs out there who compete in all kinds of different sports, including obedience and rally, but so many people outside of flyball look at our amped up dogs and say we have no control, that flyball dogs don't know how to think, etc. When you have a Jack Russell, people make even more comments about lack of control and total craziness. Well, my flyball Jack Russell just earned a Rally title her first weekend out, and earned it in style.

Being Cute

Just a few shots of the dogs being cute on a warm summer day.

Hammock time