Buff Dog

We took Tomokee in for a preventative maintenance (a.k.a. health check) at the Adobe Animal Hospital. The vet declared him to be "just perfect" and that he is as buff as a dog can get.

The vet also said that he won't need booties for hiking in snow, and most likely will not need clothing but it never hurts to put him in a neoprene jacket. This means I
won't need to buy him a full winter wardrobe -- I'm disappointed.

Dog park day

It was time to take Mr. bark-bark-bark-until-you-run-with-me to the dog park again. This time, he got to do lots of running. He ran with a brown dog, the Australian shepherd named Pepper just entering the park, and a Norwegian elkhound named Maloo (sp?), who is the gray furry dog in the photo.
Once again, we brought treats to try some recall training on Tomokee. We brought extra special food, some fat trimmed from a Salt Lick BBQ brisket, but it still didn't work. Tomokee didn't care about the food, but Maloo was sitting by my side for quite awhile sniffing my pocket.

Finally -- something Tomokee will not eat!

Tomokee is an eating kind of dog. There's not much he won't eat. I caught him sink diving the other day, and he jumped away when I yelled at him. Then I saw him spit something out in disgust. It was some leftover grapefruit scraps. This wasn't just any old grapefruit, it was a cocktail grapefruit, one of the the tastiest grapefruits I've ever eaten. Tomokee just has no taste.

New Year's Day Hike

We took a hike with a bunch of people and 2 other dogs on New Years Day to Mission Peak. I think we hiked enough to burn off the extra calories consumed on New Year's Eve at Chez TJ. Here's Tomokee on the trail.

And here's a bunch of us at the top. The other black dog is named Jack, and the border collie like dog is named Lucy.

Happy New Year!

Bucket Ball

We've taught Tomokee to play what we call "bucket ball". We throw the ball, he fetches it, then places into the bucket, from which we retrieve it and throw again. This is an improvement over the original game of fetch because before he would just drop the drool-laden ball into our laps, onto the kitchen table, or bounce it off our bodies before we threw it again. Now he puts it in the bucket and waits, resulting a more civilized game.

We won the bet!

We weighed Tomokee today for his two-year-old weight, and he weighed 58.2 lbs! So, Mark and Charlotte, according to the bet, you guys owe us a dinner! We went to Adobe Animal Hospital to weigh him, and they said he is not thin, just very "musclely". All those wind sprints he does while playing ball has given him a muscle butt and huge drumsticks for legs.