A couple of weeks ago, I had another playdate with another new friend!

Well, not really totally new. Phatso is a 3yr old Bull-Arab who was in my first Rally-O & Tricks class at the RSPCA Animal Training Centre. He is a really handsome doggie and can do lots of clever tricks and he’s got a really cool human, called Seven! Phatso has also been invited to join the RSPCA Demo Team – so we see each other every Mon night now at practice.

Now, me & Phatso never got a chance to say hello properly in class ‘coz we were always on leash and sometimes us doggies can be a bit funny when we’re restrained and can’t do natural doggie greetings. Phatso always got very excited when he saw me and barked & tried to lunge at me – which made the instructors very nervous!

But Hsin-Yi was watching Phatso’s body language and she thought that he was just being jumpy because he was frustrated that he couldn’t play – rather than because he was grumpy or wanted to say nasty things to me - and so she thought that if we could be introduced properly and have a chance to play off-leash, we might be the best of friends…he looked like the kind of confident, ‘BOING-Y’ doggie that would make a great playmate for me…

…well, she was right!

Wow! A doggie who can BOING as well as me!!

Our humans decided to take us out to Nudgee Beach for our playdate ‘coz  it’s one of the few places in Brisbane where there is *real* space for doggies to run and play (what they call a “big dog park” here would be laughed out of town back in NZ!) – and it was lucky that Seven works from home like Hsin-Yi so we could go during the week, not on the weekend when things get really crowded.

There was hardly another soul on the beach except us!

I hadn’t been to Nudgee Beach for months and months actually, because Hsin-Yi had heard from other dog owners that Brisbane City Council was being mean and sending Animal Control officers to come and catch doggies off-leash there - they were even using binoculars! We also had a very bad experience with a nasty man who saw me trotting next to Hsin-Yi, off-leash, and took out his phone machine to take a photo of me – and then rang up the Council to report me! Hsin-Yi says he must be a really sad person with no life to have Brisbane City Council on ‘speed dial’ – and he was really enjoying it too, giving us nasty smiles as he stood there talking about us. What made Hsin-Yi really grumpy was that there were at least 5 other doggies around us off-leash at the time but of course, being the biggest doggie there, I’m always the one they jump on!

The thing is – we see lots of doggies being off-leash in places where they shouldn’t be, all the time, so it seems that everybody is breaking the rules anyway. Hsin-Yi says the council should just give people what they need – otherwise people do it anyway! Because not everybody wants to just take their doggies to a fenced prison yard and just stand there gossiping with other humans – what happens if you want to go for a proper walk with your doggie? Like a hike for a hour? Or if you want to go jogging or kicking balls and stuff? Sure, we do walks on the leash sometimes but we need to be able to do stuff off-leash with our humans too – that isn’t just wrestling with other doggies in a fenced prison yard! It’s no wonder so many doggies (and humans!) are so fat here if there aren’t many places they can run free, move over a big distance and actually DO things with their humans.

Back when I could go on REAL walks with my humans! (Whakarewawera Forest, NZ)

Yeah, there are a couple of off-leash places that aren’t fenced and my human’s taken me to try some of them…like Downfall Creek Reserve which is MILES away (we sat in traffic for 1 hr coming back!) – if we go at an earlier time, it’s too hot and if we go later, there is a regular crowd of doggies that walk there every afternoon in a big pack and I got attacked by a nasty Labrador whose owner had to pull him off me. After we tried it a few times, Hsin-Yi decided it just wasn’t nice enough to make such a huge effort to go.

We’ve heard of another place called Kroll Gardens which lots of people made a fuss about as being “massive” and the best dog park near Brisbane and Hsin-Yi got very excited when she heard about it. But when she looked it up, she found that aside from being nearly 2hrs drive from where we live, it was not even that big! It is about 5 acres which is only about 10% the size of Waiatarua Reserve, the local dog park I used to go to back in Auckland. Huh! Well, that’s not ‘amazing’ enough to spend 2hrs in the car machine there and back!

There IS an unfenced dog park near us, by Kedron Brook, which is quite nice except that it is so narrow and crowded with strange doggies, it is like a doggie-multi-lane-highway.  Since it is the only place of its kind in Brisbane, everybody takes their dogs there. During the winter, when it was cooler in the daytime, Hsin-Yi took me there sometimes in the day when it was quieter and we could have a nice walk – but that was only for a couple of months – most of the year, it’s so hot that you can only go after the sun goes down and it becomes like a doggie traffic jam.

My humans don’t like to take me to places crowded with strange doggies – Hsin-Yi says putting a lot of strange adult doggies in a confined place is just asking for trouble.  (Most young doggies are fine – usually till about 2 or 3yrs – because they’re still puppies at heart and just want to play. You’ll find that most ‘peaceful’ fenced dog park communities are either dogs who have known each other all their lives or young dogs who will play with anything). And especially ‘coz I’m big & confident, I think lots of insecure doggies feel even more defensive when they’re squashed with me in a small space and so I get attacked a lot. But if I try to defend myself, people say that I’m a being a nasty, aggressive, BIG doggie picking on smaller doggies – and it makes my humans very stressy.  So now my humans avoid taking me to crowded doggie places ‘coz otherwise they just don’t enjoy the outing at all and then what’s the point?

Anyway, so all in all, I’ve had a pretty lousy year for off-leash exercise here in Brisbane and I feel very grumpy about it. Although, Hsin-Yi says that I shouldn’t be too ungrateful since there are doggies living in places where there are NO dog parks of any kind at all! I guess I’ve just been spoilt ‘coz I grew up in Auckland, NZ where we have such a huge choice of wonderful, natural, wide, open spaces, beaches, bush walks, reserves and parks that doggies are allowed to explore. Every time I visit my Kiwi doggie friends like Pepper the Pound Pup and see the wonderful walks they’ve been going on, I want to cry!

Look how far it stretches when the tide is out!

Nudgee Beach is about the only place that could compare with what we had back in NZ. It is a proper big space and ‘natural’ and beautiful to walk in!

But sadly, Nudgee is not an official off-leash dog park – which I think is SO unfair since there are miles and miles of empty mud flats when the tide is out and nobody is there using it so why can’t us doggies enjoy it??!! It would normally be covered by the sea anyway! Of course, as usual, people just don’t seem to take any notice of the stupid dog laws and lots of doggies run around off-leash on the beach, when the tide is out. We used to join them too…until Hsin-Yi got worried with all the talk about Council coming to catch doggies (it’s a $200 fine!) – so we stopped going to Nudgee for a long time…

…but then Hsin-Yi started feeling fed-up. It’s been so long since we had a decent walk and play in a big space! And all the other doggies were doing it anyway…so since we’ll be leaving Brisbane soon, she decided maybe we should just be naughty and risk it! After all, remember my playdate with Benji the Schnoodle? And with Lupe the blue Dane recently? Both those playdates were in places that weren’t official off-leash dog parks either but we just decided to be naughty and had a great time!

So we have started going back to Nudgee again. That was where I had my big fight with the giant stick recently! And that’s also where I had this fantastic playdate with my new friend, Phatso! (and no – we didn’t get caught by the Council that day - hee! hee!)

Boy – was Phatso fast! I tried and tried but I could never catch him! (Well, I think I did pretty well for a ‘senior doggie’!)

And he never stopped! Every so often, he’d suddenly act like he had a Turbo Boost in his bum and suddenly shoot off! I was exhausted just watching him. Hsin-Yi said he was like the Energiser Bunny.

Sometimes I chased him and sometimes Phatso chased me…

…Hsin-Yi was really happy to see that because she had read that when us doggies play together, a good way to tell if everything is OK is when we keep taking turns and “switch roles” – it’s like when human pups learn to take turns on the swing and share toys – it means that everything is “balanced” and nobody is getting bullied.

Of course, there are some doggies who just like to be chased ALL the time but in general, if one doggie is always doing the chasing or is always on top when wrestling, then it might be a good idea for our humans just to check that things aren’t getting too ‘rough’ and the other doggie isn’t feeling bullied (even if it is fast enough to get away – it might not want to have to keep running!). Otherwise that’s when doggies can start to feel threatened and get defensive and grumpy – and that’s how fights happen!

Phatso was also really brave in the water – now, most of you know I’m not really a – er – “water dog” – but I couldn’t have Phatso thinking that I was a big chicken! So, of course, when he ran into the sea, I had to follow him!

Caught you at last!

Well, we didn’t just spend all our time running like maniacs. I also introduced Phatso to the little residents of Nudgee Beach…the soldier crabs!

Phatso had never met a crab before – he didn’t know what to do with himself!

And my human, Hsin-Yi, gave Phatso a crash course in posing for the camera machine! Hee! Hee! By the time Hsin-Yi had finished with him, Phatso knew the command “WAIT!” really well!!

I had the most wonderful time on my playdate with Phatso and I hope you enjoyed our photos! Hsin-Yi was so happy to see me run and run (I even did zoomies at one point!) – and of course, now that we’re great friends, we’ll be able to train together much more easily in class and even learn tricks together – just like me & Benji! (*After this playdate, Phatso never lunged or barked at me in class again!)

I really hope I get a chance to meet up with Phatso on the beach again before we leave Brisbane!

P.S. Whew! I had to sleep for 3 days straight to recover from that playdate!!

See – because it is so difficult to rent a house with a doggie – never mind a giant doggie like me! – so my humans have been getting stressy about when we move to Newcastle at the end of December…

We will have to stay in a hotel until we can find a house to rent and there is only 1 hotel in Newcastle that allows doggies and if we have to stay there for many days, even weeks, while my humans are house-hunting, it will cost an AWFUL lot of money paper!

So my humans are hoping that if they can find a house before we go, then that will save a lot of money paper and stressiness!

They also wanted to check the place out because they did not know anything about Newcastle at all and didn’t know where we should live or where the dog parks are or anything.

And it is only 1hr to fly there and the tickets are not a lot of money paper if you go on a slightly smaller Big Flying Machine!

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Well, for those who don’t know, Newcastle is a city beside the sea, in the part of Australia called New South Wales. It used to be a “steel town” and lots of people make funny faces when my humans tell them that we are moving to Newcastle but my humans also heard that it is now changing and becoming a nice place to live. In fact, Newcastle Tourism call it “From Steel to Style“!

So they were really excited to check it out!

When my humans arrived at the airport, they borrowed a little car machine so they could drive around…and the first things they saw were definitely the “steel”!

Then they arrived in town and it was very pretty!

After living in Auckland for 7 years, my humans got very spoilt living in a harbour city and having the sea around them all the time and they really missed that in Brisbane. So it was so nice to be in a city near the sea again!

View of Newcastle's seaside suburbs...

Driving along the waterfront...

My humans also don’t like big cities that have lots of ugly buildings and motorways and bridges and roads, all squashed together, and too many car machines everywhere, all driving very fast…so they have not been very happy in Brisbane.

But they were really happy to see the big, wide sky in Newcastle and lots of beautiful, old buildings and nice streets with green, leafy trees, to walk in! It is not as a big a city as Brisbane so there are not so many big, tall buildings everywhere and not so many shops and fancy hotels and things – it is really more like a big town – but that’s OK, my humans don’t mind!

downtown Newcastle

downtown Newcastle

View of Newcastle "city skyline" from the waterfront...

downtown Newcastle by the water

And my humans were also very excited to find that there is a dog beach right in the middle of the city! It is not very big and is still quite crowded (compared to the wonderful beaches in NZ!) but it is nice just to have a dog-friendly beach in the city at all and not have to drive for hours and hours just to find one!

My humans saw lots of doggies enjoying themselves…

…and there was even a man beside the beach selling doggie treats! They were all made by himself and completely natural – there were all sorts: beef, lamb, kangaroo, piggies, giant bones, chews, jerkies, tendons, trotters, liver…so many yummies!

So my humans decided to bring me back a present from Newcastle!

And then after that, my humans also went to check out one of the local dog parks, which Hsin-Yi was really happy to see was ‘natural’ and not a fenced, prison yard!

King Edward Park - dog off-leash area

Of course, the most important thing my humans went to do was some house-hunting so they spent most of the time looking at lots of different houses for rent and also driving through the different areas of Newcastle to see which one would be nice for us to live in.

See, I don’t really need to live in a house with a huge garden (I have one here in Brisbane which I can never enjoy ‘coz of the nasty neighbour doggies and the poisonous cane toads - it’s just a big headache for my humans to cut the grass all the time!) – and my humans like to live in streets with old houses that have ‘character’…so they were really happy to find parts of Newcastle like that!

terraced townhouses

The only problem is that old houses are built differently, going upwards instead of sideways and all sandwiched together - and I have never lived in a house with an upstairs before! But that’s OK – I’m sure I can learn.

And these houses only have small “courtyard gardens” but that’s OK too because I don’t need a big garden since I go out for exciting walks to different places every day anyway and I only need somewhere for sunbathing…and it means that my humans won’t have to worry about cutting the grass in the garden anymore!

But sadly, although my humans looked at a lot of houses, they did not see one that would be good for us to live in. See, they have to think carefully about how the house would suit a giant doggie – like I just cannot go on any stairs that are too steep or narrow and I also need a bathtub big enough for me to have my baths, which I can climb in and out of easily, and even though I don’t need a big garden, it still needs to be big enough for me to have my Toilet Area in one corner! And if a house has all these things, then it still needs to be in a nice street and accept pets – and not too far from the hospital where Paul will be doing his Work Thing…

…well, that’s a lot of things to ask for and so it is like looking for treasure. And my humans did not find any treasure this weekend. But anyway, that’s OK – there is still some time until the end of Dec so my humans have decided that they will go on another weekend and try again!

Well, after all that house-hunting, my humans were really tired and so they went to one of the nice cafes in Darby St, which is definitely the “style” side of Newcastle – hee! hee!

And guess what? One of the shops in Darby St had a pet rat! Yes, his name was Smokey and Hsin-Yi thought he was gorgeous! He was only 4 months old and really cuddly. Hsin-Yi would love to have a rat – they are very cute & clever and can even learn tricks. She said that meeting Smokey was the highlight of her visit to Newcastle!

Although my humans didn’t find a house for us to live in, they were still happy they went to check out Newcastle because now they know it much better and can look for houses easier. They had a great time and were a bit sad to have to come back to Brisbane…

back in Brisbane...

downtown Brisbane

Story Bridge, Brisbane

Brisbane traffic!

Well, so now it is Sun afternoon and my pet-sitter, Kylie, has brought me home – whew! I’ve been having a busy time too!

Aside from Harley who lives with Kylie, she had another doggie staying with her this weekend…my little friend, Earnest the blue Dane! Except that he’s not so little anymore now! He’s still not as big as me but he is growing fast. So we 3 Danes had a great time playing together in Kylie’s garden and we also went for walks together (sorry there are no photos ‘coz Kylie didn’t take any!)

And of course, I spent the rest of my time staring obsessively at – er, saying hello to Kylie’s kitties. So all in all, I don’t care what my humans say – I think I have had a far more busy weekend than them!

In fact, I was so exhausted when I came home that when my humans showed me the yummies they bought me in Newcastle, I could barely lift my head up to sniff it!

Can you bring it closer?

Mmm, smells good...

It's too much effort to lift my head - can you hold it while I'm chewing it?

I asked Hsin-Yi if she could hold it while I was chewing it but she told me not to be such a lazy doggie. Well, really! If she had as busy a weekend as I did, she would be exhausted too! Anyway, I found that I could still chew it lying down, without having to move my head much…

Whew! It took me 5 minutes to chew that up – that was hard work!

Right, well, I’m off to do some serious Sunday napping now!

Hope you’ve had a good weekend too!

* A Favour Please!

Sorry! I know several of our readers have been having trouble loading the blog or the Comments page – they keep getting an error message about “unsupported compression”. (Sometimes I wonder if moving to self-hosting was the right decision! as I no longer have WordPress Technical Support to rely on and I don’t really know enough about websites to understand problems & debug, etc. by myself). Anyway, am trying to work out what the problem is. One thing suggested to me was to deactivate the plugins in our sidebar (eg. slideshows) which may be causing problems with loading – so this is what I’ve done, all except the plugin for email subscription. If this solves the problem, then I will re-activate the plugins one by one and hopefully work out which one is causing the problem.

So could I please ask a favour – now that most of the plugins are deactivated, I really need to know if this makes a difference. So if any of you are having trouble loading the blog page or Comments page in the next day or two (or find that it loads faster) - could you please drop us a line at bighoneydog@gmail.com (if you can’t leave a comment) to let us know? Thank you very much!      ~ Hsin-Yi

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Last weekend, my humans went to a very cool place called Tangalooma Island, which is a big sandy island in the sea near Brisbane. 

Tangalooma is very special because there is a family of wild dolphins that come to the beach every night and humans who are staying at the hotel there can even feed them fish yummies!

Also, lots of humpback whales pass Tangalooma with their babies every summer – so it is a good place to go on a big boat in the sea and do something called “whale-watching”. 

Humpback whale mummy & baby

My humans love whales and dolphins (one of Hsin-Yi’s favourite charities is the WDCS) and so as soon as they heard about Tangalooma when we first arrived in Brisbane, they wanted to go. They had decided many, many months ago and were supposed to go in August – as a special treat for their 13th wedding anniversary – but then when Hsin-Yi’s mummy came up with her last-minute ‘family-trip-to-Shanghai’ idea, my humans had to change their plans. But now the whale-watching season will be finishing at the end of October because all the whales will be going to the faraway, freezing place called Antarctica – so my humans had to go quickly before they lost their chance (and lost all their money paper too! )

The only bad thing was – last weekend the weather was TERRIBLE! It was raining and pouring and raining and pouring – and huge winds blowing everywhere. My humans heard on the news that usually for the month of Oct, the rain is 75mm – but by last weekend, it was already over 200mm! 

And it was awfully cold too. It was crazy because only a few days ago, it was getting very hot here in Brisbane – almost 30 degrees again! – and with lots of that yucky sticky air called “humidity”. So my humans packed all the wrong clothes, because Tangalooma is a “beach resort” – Hsin-Yi said she wished she had packed for a “ski resort”!  

To get to Tangalooma, my humans had to go on a big kind of boat called a ferry. It was a VERY bumpy ride because there were angry winds blowing over the sea and making huge waves that were bashing the ferry everywhere. It took about 1 & half hour to get to Tangalooma and my humans were very glad when the trip was over! 

Tangalooma Resort - it was such a shame coz it is usually so pretty with blue skies & sunshine & white, sandy beaches!

But then they heard that the whale-watching trip which they were supposed to go on, on Sunday, had been cancelled because of the crazy weather – so their only chance would be to stay on the ferry and go on the Sat afternoon trip instead…so they did. And Paul wished he hadn’t! 

The winds were even more angry now and the sea was even more bumpy and the ferry was smacked around even more by the huge waves – Hsin-Yi said it was like being in a washing machine! Lots of people on the ferry were looking very green and sticking their heads into bags. And then Paul started to to feel an awful tummy sickie and started to puke. Poor Paul! He puked and puked for the 3 hours of the whale-watching trip – even when there was nothing left in his tummy, he kept puking!  

Hsin-Yi was lucky – she did not feel sickie at all – and so she managed to see the whales and even get some photos! 

This whale is doing a kind of jump called 'breaching'

This whale was waving at the ferry!

This whale was doing something called "spy hopping" which is sort of like sticking its head out of the water to look at things!

Can you believe that Hsin-Yi got all of those pictures from inside the boat, behind glass (‘coz it was raining too much to go outside) and with the boat bouncing up & down all the time? And the whales were actually very far away. Isn’t her new camera machine amazing? 

Poor Paul did not see the whales at all – he had his head in a bag.  But he did stop puking for a moment to smile for the camera machine – hasn’t Hsin-Yi got him well-trained? Ha! Ha!

Well, Paul was REALLY glad to be back on land again, even if it was very wet land! 

It was a terrible shame because my humans could see that the resort would have been so pretty if the weather was nice… 

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Hsin-Yi had wanted to go on the ‘Bush Tucker Walk’ and the ‘Eco Marine Beach Walk’ and the ‘Bird-Spotting Walk’ and the ‘Kayaking Safari’…but actually, my humans were lucky just to get to their room without been blown away!   

Of course, the one thing my humans couldn’t miss was the Wild Dolphin Feeding at 6:30pm that night…but Hsin-Yi decided there was no way she was going to wear a swimming suit like they told her to – not with that crazy wind and rain on the beach! 

Lucky for my humans, the hotel was renting some special trousers which had boots attached and were all made of rubber, so you wouldn’t get wet! 

Lots of other people didn’t get those special rubber trousers – poor things – and so they were shivering in the wind & rain, in their shorts and swimming suits and wet T-shirts! 

And here is a short movie showing Paul feeding one of the dolphins, called Nari! 

Nari is an adult male who is 13yrs old – he came with his mummy, Bess, to the beach when he was a baby and even though she has gone to the Rainbow Wave now and he is all grown up, he still keeps coming. He is very playful and naughty – and he is also very brave. He has a scar on his head where he survived a shark attack! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1YlysBYk1Y

This is very special because it is not a “dolphin show” like in Sea World – (my humans don’t like those places where they keep dolphins and killer whales in small tanks just to perform for humans) – these dolphins are completely wild and they decide what they want to do. The hotel people only feed them 20% of their diet – so that they won’t become too dependent on humans and so they will keep learning to hunt for themselves. There are about 11 dolphins that come every night – and some of them are still babies – SO cute! 

The next morning, my humans got to see the Pelican Feeding before breakfast… 

…and listen to a lady from the Marine Education Centre give an interesting talk about the pelicans and cormorants. For example, do you know why comorants always stand with their wings spread out like that? It’s because their feathers are not completely waterproof and so after they dive in the water a few times, they have to come on land and stand like that to dry their feathers out!

After that, my humans spent some time reading about dolphins and whales and sharks and sea turtles and other sea birds at the Marine Education Centre…and then sitting around drinking coffee and hoping for the rain to stop…

…because there was nothing you could do at the resort with the horrible weather like that. So in the end, my humans decided to come back to Brisbane early.

They were very lucky to get on an earlier boat back to Brisbane – (otherwise they might have to stay on the island another night, if the weather got worse!) – but they were not so sure once the boat started moving! It was a much smaller boat than the ferry they came on – and it was called a “wave piercing catamarn” which means it was designed to go through the waves, instead of over them. Yup. Through the water. It was very scary. Especially as the weather was even worse now – with even bigger angry winds and more rain…Hsin-Yi said the waves were like tsunamis! They were lurching up & down and rolling around so much, it felt like the boat was flipping over lots of times – and there was so much water covering the boat every time they “pierced” through a wave that they couldn’t tell if they were under the sea or on top of it!

Luckily, Paul had found some special medicines which stop you feeling tummy sickies so he did not puke at all this time. But my humans were still really glad when they finally got back to Brisbane! Whew!

It was a shame it was such a wet weekend (Hsin-Yi says it took them 2 days to get completely dry again! ) – but my humans still had a nice time!

(* And if you’re wondering what I was doing – I was having a nice weekend with my pet-sitter, Kylie, and her Great Dane, Harley, of course! But it’s nice to be back home! )

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• Tangalooma Island Resort http://www.tangalooma.com/info/home/ 
• Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort http://www.tangaloomawilddolphinresort.com/ 

So today I wanted to show you some pictures from before the holiday – when Hsin-Yi took me back to Bribie Island! This is one of the few places that has a decent, big, uncrowded dog beach near Brisbane (much more like back in NZ) so my humans really like it - although it is awfully far and takes a long time in the car machine, so we can’t go there often!

What was really cool was that this time, I went with some doggie friends! My friend, Lupe the blue Dane, had been asking me to meet him for another playdate so I suggested that he come along to Bribie Island with us! And then a merle Dane living in Brisbane, called Voski, who found me through my blog, also wanted to have a playdate with me – so I told her – hey, come along too! Lupe also brought his neighbour doggie with him – a lovely Bull Arab called Marley.

*”Bull Arabs” are a ‘new’ breed of doggie that people are trying to make in Australia – by mixing Bull Terrier with Greyhound & English Pointer or GSP, sometimes with mastiff breeds too.

Marley the "Bull Arab"

In fact, some of them have such “Dane-like” heads & bodies and Dane characteristics in behaviour that Hsin-Yi thinks a lot of them have Great Dane in them too. There was a Bull Arab in my last Rally-O & Tricks class at the RSPCA Animal Training Centre, called Fatso, and he really looked like a slightly smaller Dane with funny white & brindle patches – he even kept giving his paw like a Dane! (You might remember seeing him in my highlights video – he was a whizz at the skateboard!) Bull Arabs were created to hunt wild piggies and they are really strong and fast. They are not officially recognised yet, so this means nasty Backyard Breeders can make lots of puppies from mixing any doggies together and sell them as ‘Bull Arabs’. Hsin-Yi thinks they are really beautiful but she is worried that a big doggie like this which has so many powerful breeds in his body might fall into the hands of irresponsible people and end up being made to do bad things…

Anyway, Marley was the most lovely, sweet doggie with not one grumpy bone in his body. We had a fantastic time all running and chasing each other on the beach!

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Talking of mixed breed doggies, I’m not sure Voski was really a Dane – I mean, come on! She actually liked to go in the water! She even went swimming!! Voluntarily! Ugh!

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She was also very, very fast – and kept teasing me to chase her…Huh! I’ll show that young whippersnapper!

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Whew! I’m pooped!

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The others were still full of beans but I was starting to struggle to keep up…hey! I’m like 4 ~ 5 years older than all of them, you know! I think I’m in pretty good shape for a ‘senior doggie’ to keep up with these young pups!

Hey...wait for me!

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Pretty soon we were all pretty knackered and had to stop for a rest…

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…and a drink…

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In fact, our humans said it was time for the picnic lunch! Woohoo!

Of course, us doggies made sure we got all the prime spots on the blankets first (us Danes are experts at this sort of thing…! )

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Then we noticed something – hey! The humans were not sharing their yummies with us!

How rude!

Could they have only brought yummies for their own lunch?? What about us?

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Voski started getting very cheeky, trying to get to the yummies (well, she was still only 15 months old so she was the youngest pup there!) - and even Marley started trying to hassle the humans. Of course, Lupe was still always the perfect gentleman as usual!

Well, I’m a much older & wiser doggie so I had to teach the younger pups what to do. I showed Voski & Marley that the best way to get humans to give you things is to earn it through good manners, rather than pestering them!

See, if you sit & wait nicely, your human might reward you with a yummy nibble!

(Can you see my long slimey drool hanging down? Hee! Hee!)

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So they took my advice…and they all got yummy nibbles too!

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After lunch, we were all feeling quite happy & tired, so we all had a little doze in the shade…

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And then it was time to go home! We all had such a great time, we were very sorry to leave…

I do hope my humans take me to Bribie Island again soon - it’s such a great dog beach! (in fact, Paul missed out on this trip ’coz he had gone to the faraway place called England to see his sickie Daddy) 

Of course, guess what Hsin-Yi had to do before everybody said good-bye? Get a group self-timer, of course!

* Bribie Island dog beach is starts at Red Beach on the lower west side of the island and runs along the bottom of the island to Woody Bay on the east coast. For full directions & map, see my previous post: Beach Picnic on Bribie Island!