Whistler Weekend 2

Yesterday, I walked on a frozen lake for the very first time in my life. I had a rockie, and I played with it. It felt so good, lying down on that thick sheet of ice. Fortunately, the camera was out of battery. Like completely DEAD, like so relaxing, like no PUPARAZZI following me around!!!!

Unfortunately, today was a different story. This morning, mum and I got up early. We walked from our lodge located in the village to the skateboard/dirt jump park.


This place is usually packed with skate boarders during the summer months, but not today.


All the ramps and obstacles were covered by icy-snow,


Here I was on top of a platform, taking a good look around,


One of the many venues that will take place in Whistler is ski jumping,


So I thought I would give it a try!! (with mum yelling "Sunshade, wait, NO, SLOOOOOOW, arrrrrgh...." - did you count how many commands she gave me in under a second? Definitely can't be a trainer!)


(mum: I'm always worried about Sunshade hurting her bad elbow, but it seems my "slow" actually means speed up and go crazy!)

TA-DAH!! I landed safely, and perfectly!


In case you were wondering why I had "poodle feet". Well, that was because I stumbled and scraped my right wrist pretty badly a week ago, so mum clipped off the hair that was surrounding the wound. She said that would help me heal faster (as you can see, I was all healed!). Then the night before coming to Whistler, mum decided to clip the rest of my feet so snow won't get stuck to the hair or in between my toes.

Now I don't know if its my fluffy coat or my poodle feet or maybe a combination of both, people kept asking if I was a "poodle mix" or "doodle"!! There are so many Labradoodles, Goldendoodles, Whoodles (Wheaten Terrier X poodle), and other doodles that people thought I was one, can you believe it??

Let me show you a picture of an AIREdoodle (yup, Airedale X Standard poodle). This is what an Airedoodle looks like,


(mum: I saw an ad stating that an Aire-doodle was looking for a good home. My curiosity got the better of me and I wrote the poster telling her that I had two Airedales already so I couldn't adopt him, but would love to see a picture if she didn't mind. She very nicely sent me this picture of the Aire-doodle. He is ADORABLE! I definitely see the Airedale in him!)

Not like this. This is a SuperDALE!!!


Anyway...back on track...

I walked around the skate park a little more,


Then I spotted a running creek!!


Being a SuperDALE, the SuperDOLPHIN, SuperSWAN, SuperOTTERHOUND, SuperSHARK, etc in me make me naturally attracted to water. Of course, I had to go check out the creek.


I had to walk down a steep slope to get down to the creek (mum: more like RAN down a steep slope!), of course, mum was lagging behind as usual,


So I waited for her, patiently,


When mum finally caught up to me, I headed straight for the creek,


I didn't care about the cold, because I was on a mission, (that's my serious "mission face" btw)


MISSION COMPLETED! Found MY perfect rockie!

(yes, that's MY perfect rockie in front of the poodle feet!)


I played with it,


I scooted it across the icy snow with my face,


While keeping MY muscle butt way up in the aire!


Have a look, there is a good shot of MY muscle butt for you BOYZ!!

I rolled on it,


All over it!



Then it was nap time,


I mean, all that exercise you know?


SuperDALE's energy bar needed to be refilled,


Finally, the energy bar was filled up (mum: 15 mins later...lol), and I woke up,


Still a bit groggy.....


Time to get back to work!!


Since the icy snow surface made for unsteady footing, I decided that it was easier and safer for me to continue my work lying down,


My work was well, digging of course, being a SuperTERRIER and all,


I took a short break,


And went straight back to digging,



Watch this if you still can't get the picture,

Then mum got bored. It's not a good thing when she's bored. Reason being, whatever she comes up to entertain herself with, ALWAYS involves me...

Here I was just lying on the icy snow, enjoying the view with MY hard earned rockie in front of me,


But mum was bored, so she decided to put me in a "down-stay", took MY rockie, and started walking a trail in snow. I couldn't see where the trail was from where I was doing my down-stay.....


You see, I took Tracking classes when I was about 2.5 years old (that's 7.5 years ago!). I absolutely LOVED it and did very well!! The tracking classes involved the handlers to leave the dogs behind with someone while they went off trail into the forest to set tracks for the dogs. Markers were placed on surrounding trees along the way so they didn't lose the tracks. The beginning of the track was set by making a triangle shape on the ground with the tip of the triangle pointing in the direction of the trail. The end of the trail was marked by a circular shape like what mum had done in the picture above. (mum: it was meant to look like a circle..LOL) The dogs would then be given the command to track by their handlers at the beginning of the tracks. Dogs were required to have their noses to the ground all the time sniffing out their handler's scent and follow it. The reward was USUALLY placed in the center of the circle for when the dog finally tracked to the end.

I said "usually" because my EVIL mum decided that 7.5 years of no tracking practice wasn't hard enough for me, she decided to bury MY reward - the rockie, under snow inside the circle. Like this,


Watch me track...... You will see my nose on the snow 90% of the time. I went off the scent trail a little bit when I went to the far side of the snow mount, but believe it or not, that was because I had picked up mum's scent coming BACK from setting the track. After mum re-directed me back to the track, I had no problem tracking to the end.

I dogsonally thought I did very well considering the last time I tracked was at least 7 years ago. But.... WHERE WAS MY ROCKIEEEEEE????? Geezus that woman!

(Hi Cathy, I think my mum needs a refresher course on how to be a tracking handler. Please sign her up, so she doesn't screw me over!!)

(mum: Sunshade did excellent, and I really shouldn't have buried her reward... She did so well and really LOVED tracking a lot when we were taking classes. I stopped because I found it kind of scary to go practice in the forest on my own. She also got quite stressed whenever I had to tie her up to go set a trail. If you have a young dog with lots of energy, this is a great way to get them tired out because they are concentrating and processing with their noses a lot. I would totally put Jaffa, and maybe even Sunshade in tracking classes if a group of us could go practice together.)