just another day in alaska...

a volcano erupted and we almost got charged by a moose. went for a nice long monday walk with friends. the monday walks have been fun..i never know who will turn up. today friends from the peds unit arika and sandra came along with a new friend sandra had met. so we had 5 dogs. arika had her new baby, sasha and her two bulldogs, one french, one english. so it was quite the crew. all the dogs were polite and got along well. blossom got to chase her frisbee the entire trek. she is totally wiped out presently and has been since we got home this afternoon. she carries several extra pounds on the walks in fresh spring snow as she gets large clumps of snow on her. no moose sightings til near the end of the walk.

as you can see we eventually met a moose. i turned around to see that i was within 15 feet of a moose. rio walked on ahead and almost walked right into the moose...luckily the wind tricked her and she turned and followed where the moose had been instead of where the moose was. this led her away from the actual moose! she got within maybe 10 feet though. lucky for me she was blind and didn't notice where the moose actually was. i handed off blossom and went to fetch rio in the woods. that moose looked ready to charge us all. believe me....they only get bigger as they get closer.

after the walk i attempted to get some official volcano eruption photo's. i did manage the doggles on both dogs, but was unable to get the bandana's on them. picture did come out cute. i think this was the first shot...we got lucky...! other attempts failed miserably. apparently the dogs aren't too fond of wearing the doggles. hehe.

so yes...our volcano erupted several times through the night. i believe the last i heard it had erupted 5 times....some 50,000feet into the sky. lucky for anchorage the wind direction was north and west of us. so far so good. we are ready...except the dogs aren't necessarily willing.

we went for coffee after...well i got hot chocolate...never have acquired a taste for coffee. the girls were due for a vet appointment so off we went. rio loves to visit at the clinic...blossom is quite wary of the vet and those needles that come with it all. she won't take a treat from the vet and i wonder if she would take a treat from her on the trail as we do run into our vet on occasion out on the trails. we may have to test this. rio takes all the treats she is given and despite the fact that the vet always says the dogs should lose a few pounds she always loads them with treats. does she feel guilty or is it just that they are so darn cute you just want to give them treats. it is funny that the vet that was almost angry with me for not taking rio to surgery and instead getting her the brace is now recommending the brace to other clients and very happy with how rio is doing. blossom also got some meds as she has had these reverse sneezes and i guess that could be allergies but could also be some kind of nose mite...ick!

the vet also mentioned that friends were at the trailhead when the guy who got tree'd by a bear came out. apparently, the bear had ahold of his foot and chewed up the boot. the people with the dogs had a gun and perhaps this bear would have been a good one to destroy...it didn't have any cubs and there was no cache associated with the attack. it's always a tough balance having bears and moose in a bigger city like anchorage. i love that they are here, but we did have several people really hurt by bear attacks last year.

chatted with my brother jeff for a bit. always entertaining and then met up with sandra for a movie. after last nights crying movie i was ready for laughter. we selected "miss march". it was crazy, stupid, silly and just sick and wrong...but we laughed our arses off the entire way through. can't say i'd recommend the movie, but if you just like sick humor and want to laugh rent the silly thing.

it's after midnight so i guess i should finish paying the bills...and then get off this addicting computer!