シロクマ通信です。
日々是好日のクロンダイク、またもや大満足の一日でした。いつものアルバニーバルブのビーチでお馴染みの仲間たちとたっぷり遊び、家へ帰っておやつの骨にかぶりつき、たっぷり昼寝をしてからまた夕方の散歩に出ました。朝も軽く近所を偵察して回ったので今日は散歩3回です。
適度な運動、仲間たちとの楽しい時間、健康的な食事。なんてうらまやしいライフスタイル。
今日の写真は散歩屋さんのシンシアが撮ってくれました。こうやって私たちと一緒でないときシロクマが何してるのか見せてくれてありがとう！
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Christmas Santa Cruzing With Mr. Klondike
Mr. Klondike spent Saturday busily expanding his territory to include the beautiful, bohemian and often brainy beach town of Santa Cruz, home of University of California at Santa Cruz, a famed boardwalk, incredible beaches (including one where Hawaiian royalty fare first said to have introduced surfing to the mainland) and a good handful of tech startups. Just goes to show that Santa Cruz Pier isn’t a famous wharf and boardwalk, it’s a misspelling of a great breed!
The morning started with the annual Santa Cruz Christmas Parade Staring Klondike and West Coast Great Pyrenees Rescue.
In the Staging Area
The March Begins
Mr. Klondike Meets, Greets, and Speaks With His Fans Along The Route
Post March Group Shot
After the parade, Klondike and his support staff enjoyed delicious cookies (OK, Klondike got some cheese) and hospitality (thanks for Patti and Richard) and at the home of a Santa Cruz Pyre family, and of course some great conversation.
And then, it was time to move onto one of Santa Cruz’s famed dog beaches, Lighthouse Field. Unfortunately, Mr. Klondike’s support staff had never been there before, and the map on Yelp was less than precise, so the excursion included an extra couple of miles of walking, but the weather was just perfect, and there were some cookies to be burned off. It was a great beach, by the way. Beautiful and full of friendly dogs and people. There seemed to be plenty of parking. Here’s a map.
Klondike Enjoying The Beach And Making New Friends
Klondike Conquers Briones Regional Park With Wag ‘n Trails
Saturday Mr. Klondike and I joined Wag ‘n Tails, an excellent and very active MeetUp.com based group dedicated to hiking with dogs, on an 8-mile jaunt through Briones Regional Park in Martinez California, about 30 minutes from Berkeley.
It was a great walk with a great group of people and dogs. A full report is coming, but in the meantime, some pics to enjoy. Click to see full size.
Nothing like a dirt bath on a hot day…
Refreshing mid-walk swim
In-water head shake
PetTech Pet CPR & First Aid Class
The PetTech Pet CPR & First Aid Class can’t protect your four-footed friend from sickness or injury, but it gives you the tools to deal with either effectively, and reduce the chances that something bad turns into something tragic. I can not recommend this class highly enough.
Here’s a quick overview of some of the skills you will learn in this five-hour, $90 class:
- How to manage an injury/accident scene. For example… Your dog has just been hit by a car. Or bitten by a snake. Or has fallen unconscious for no obvious reason.What do you do? It will always be situational, but this class will help you find the best answer.
- How to perform pet CPR. CPR can buy you the time you need to get your pet to the doctor. And in some cases, like choking, it can immediately save a life. PetSavers will have you doing it competently in 15 minutes or less. Learn this skill!
- How to give first aid for bleeding, broken (or suspect broken) limbs, snake bites, insect/spider bites, impalement, accidental amputation, poisoning, heatstroke and frostbite.
- How to do a regular, mindful assessment of your pet so you’ll know if something is changing
- How to put together a first aid kit – large for home, smaller for car and smallest to carry when hiking. I had put together a hiking first kit I was pretty pleased with last year, but based on what I learned I completely redid it and now have something much better, and fully suited to person and animal use
The above list sounds like a lot, but it was presented in a very common sense way so I’m pretty sure most of it will stick. And for what doesn’t, we were given handy-dandy cheat sheets for our first aid kit.
PetTech offers classes in or near just about every major city in the US. This link will let you find one near you.
PetTech offers two classes, the five-hour Pet CPR and First Aid class I took; and PetSavers, an eight-hour class that covers the same material but also includes dental health, and elder animal differences and care. Instructors are free to set their own prices, but the $120 for the eight-hour class and $90 for the five-hour class seems pretty standard, at least for the Bay Area.
The biggest takeaway: Your most import first aid tools are your phone and your car keys. The first aid you’ll do is simply to help your pet hold it together until he can get to the hospital. Put your vet’s info, the local vet ER’s info and poison control’s info (855-764-7661) at the very top of favorites in your phone. PetTech offers a free app which, among other things, can direct you to the nearest veterinary ER. Hint on using your phone: On iOS go to a contact and check Add to Favorites to add to favorites, but to sort the Favorites menu so your vet, animal ER, and poison control are on top, go to Favorites and hit Edit.
The PetTech website is incomplete, ugly and a bit frustrating and the main office in Carlsbad is slow to respond to either phone messages or email. But don’t let that that stop you. PetTech is about an excellent curriculum and, if Mr. Wong is any indication, a network of excellent instructors who, I understand, bring their different backgrounds to the class.
Contact an instructor near you (see link at top) and register for a class. The little bit of time and money you spend will be one of the best investments you could ever make.
[6-17-16 updated to correctly explain the differences between PetSavers and Pet CPR and First Aid classes and point out that pricing is instructor set. Thank you, Payton Wong!]
The Christmas Pyre
Klondike in front of Barbarella, one of his people’s favorite restaurants. Merry Christmas Everyone!
