Molalla State Park

Despite the rather bleak weather forecast on Friday (guess what, rain, rain and more rain), today turned out to be really beautiful. It started to clear up at around 9 or so, and since this might very well be our last chance to enjoy the sun, we decided to head to Molalla State Park for a little walk (I wouldn't call it a hike, really). 

When we arrived a good half a dozen dogs were already there, all off-leash, ready to explore the park with their owners. What a great opportunity for our pooch to work on his behavior modification (no, you can't always play with dogs when you see them). He did pretty well, huge improvement from half a year ago, but still not where we'd like him to be. Patience (urgh...). 

They continued their walk around the field that you see in the above picture, while we moved closer to the river and through the woods. It was gorgeous. With all the leaves Pepper was in heaven (all those smells, got to inhale them all!), and both Jan and I thoroughly enjoyed the calm and peace.

A last quick stop at a scenic point

before we headed back home and treated ourselves to something yummy from Fred Meyer (it's Sunday after all!):

Later in the afternoon we took Mr. Pooch to the dog park. This time - entrance on leash, walking around on leash for a while, meeting dogs POLITELY (not running up to them to engage them in play immediately). He did really well (except once when he got excited when a 10 months old pup got all excited around him). After we had finished our meet-and-greet tour we went to the southern half of the park and played ping-pong with him: Jan and I were a good 100 m apart and took turns calling him. He did so well! 

I guess we'll keep doing that for a while. Trying to keep him calm in the dog park (which is hard because many of the dogs there are in a very excited state already, and he picks up on that), not entering if there is potential trouble, and keeping him focused on us (i.e. making us more interesting than the other dogs - the hardest part of it!). He has shown huge improvement over the last month or so, so I am confident that we'll get there with patience and persistence.