Vick in Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Eagles have signed Michael Vick today, and animal and dog lovers around town are furious. If you didn't know, Vick has spent the last 2 years in prison for his sponsorship of a dogfighting group. Here is a summary of his involvement in the dogfighting case: http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/20090814_ap_summaryofmichaelvickdogfightingcase.html (The summaryis that he organized a dog-fighting group and helped kill 6-8 "underperforming" dogs by drowning or hanging in 2007.)

Here's what I think of overpaid, animal-abusing NFL players:

Let's hope Bella demolishes it!

Dog Bed, Monkey Head

We finally relented and bought Bella a dog bed. She hasn't quite figure it out yet...
We can't show you the other things she's been doing to her new dog bed...just not PG-rated for the kiddies. Needless to say, she loves her dog bed. A lot.

Oh, and that monkey toy she got for Easter from Donna? She beheaded it. Yummy -- stuffed monkey brains...

Camping in the Rain

We ventured up north to the Poconos for camping and hiking this weekend. Ricketts Glen State Park is about 2.5 hours north of Philadelphia, nestled in the Lehigh Valley. It has 22 waterfalls total.


Bella thoroughly enjoyed hiking, although it was tricky in some spots to navigate while walking with her. She was very excited and tugged pretty hard on the leash. Here we are by a "wedding cake" type of waterfall.

And then, the rain began.

And it continued all night...

We huddled underneath shelter that we'd fashioned from a tarp and rope. Here's Bella by the light of the lantern.

"It's a trench!"

Our Dutch friend, Pieter, was driven to divert the water in a system of waterways. (Maybe trenchwork is in his blood?) Unfortunately, there was just too much water.

After a long day of hiking and general muddiness, our puppy curled up on a pile of laundry, still smokey from the campfire. We think that's a sign she'd like to go back.

Dog Bed, Dog Park

Bella is trying to tell us something. That something is: "Get me a dog bed!!" She does this by climbing onto our coffee table, which, to her benefit, is a padded table-bench. But she barely fits onto it, and it's pretty pathetic and adorable. We have avoided purchasing a dog bed because in all likelihood she will tear it shreds. That likelihood is decreasing every day, as she gets older and stops generally tearing things to shreds.

In other news, we enjoyed a beautiful summer evening at the dog park tonight. Here's a video of our pup playing tug with a neighborhood dog.

Doga

While we were down at a beach house in Cape May NJ earlier this summer Rachel and BelAir decided to do some lazy morning Yoga, or in this case Doga. Pretty cute. I think Bella needs to work on some of her moves but shes got downward dog down, although she's rarely meditative while doing it.

Spring Baseball

There's nothing that signals the end of winter quite like baseball. It's finally warm enough to enjoy being outside, the hot dogs are warm and the beer is cold, the field is always bright green, and the long 160-plus game season stretches out before you, promising a long summer. This spring we traveled to see friends and family in two National League cities and to enjoy this spring rite of passage.

In April we visited friends Megan and Brad Riechmann in St. Louis and took in the Cubs-Cardinals game. (One of the hottest rivalries in baseball.) As you can tell from the picture below, the Cubs did not shine that particular day. (Losing 2-8. Although they did come back to win 10-3 the next day.)

The Cubs-Cards rivalry is intense. We felt like we were back in Philly and not in the good ole' Midwest, the banter at the ballpark was so good. To Brad's dismay, Megan has promised to actually put a Cubs onsie on their new baby boy this fall, if one happens to fall into their laps. Don't worry, Meg -- it's on the way!

We also ventured to the top of the St. Louis Arch to enjoy the view of the city. Unfortunately, it was a very windy day and once at the top viewing area you could feel the arch swaying back and forth. Needless to say, we didn't stay long.

In June, we ventured to Chicago to see Russell's brother, Rob, and his wife, Stacey. Rob is a veteran Cubs fan, and Stacey has donned Cubbie blue as well in the last few years. We saw the Cubs play the Cleveland Indians on a scorching 80-degree sunny day. It was especially brutal because we sat in the bleachers, where no shade is to be found. Oh, and it was a 13-inning game! After 5 1/2 hours in the sun we all left Wrigley sunburned and more freckled than when we went in. Popsicles and cold beers helped cool us off.

Sitting in the bleachers, we were able to interact with left-fielder Alfonso Soriano. Russ and I have nicknamed him "the Cat" because of his feline ways and little hops when he runs to catch a ball. Check out this video of a fan spraying him down with a water bottle (which she also used on the crowd, thank goodness!). In the picture, he's telling us how many outs there are (two).

This was an especially exciting win for the Cubs, as it ends the Miller Curse! Russell had never witnessed the Cubs win a game, even though he's been to many games over the last few years. And, until last year, Rob hadn't either. It was the Miller Curse. Thankfully, now the only thing standing in the way of a Cubs world series win is that nasty goat. This could be the year!

We finally heard the Cubs win song, Go Cubs Go!

Walking the Dog

No, not that type of woking. The sort that results in the type of doggie bags that tend to get tossed directly in the trash... As you can imagine, we've been walking BelAir a ton since we got her. A city dogs life is a lavish affair where your owner is forced to take you out for 4-5 walks a day, so you can exercise, relieve yourself, and terrorize pigeons. Rachel and I have become quite well acquainted with all the "deuce" spots in a 6 block radius, and Bell has charted an internal map of all dog parks, dog day cares, and dry cleaners that give out treats (all very good things) as well as all automatic doors and scary dogs houses (bad things that require us to cross the street to proceed).



On this particular walk, Rachel and I went to marvel and document perhaps my greatest parallel parking job ever. It required only two bumps of the cars before and after me (which I believe are officially fair game in the philly parking scene). I had an equally impressive parking spot earlier in the month that I forgot to document.

Since we had the camera, we decided to take pictures of each other by this small and peculiar monument that sits at the end of Clinton street, probably one of the more beautiful lazy alleys in our new neighborhood. The plaque says "A merciful man is merciful to his beast." It must have been put up by an animal lover, I wish I knew more about it, but whenever I walk the pup by there I notice it and call her a beast. We have fun.

Probably the most cute/annoying thing that Bella does on our frequent walks is to go up the steps of a brownstone walkup. At first we didn't know why she was doing this and suspected that she may have lived in one. Our new theory is that these are the walkups of houses that have dogs, and shes going in for a closer smell.

You might think, "Oh, that doesn't sound too bad," and you are right. But as you can see our hood is packed to the gills with these walkups and its not unheard of for her to need to go up 3-4 per block if she is particularly curious that day.