Christie Lagally

Seattle Space Needle circa 1960-ish

As many of you know, my husband, two dogs and cat crossed the Canadian border and returned home to Seattle at the end of March.  What we expected to be a difficult border crossing with one reactive dog in one car and a protective dog in the other, proved to be a simple border crossing except for the cat. Our cat Buca, who is not accustomed to long distance travel, was not a pleasant travel companion according to my husband, Eric, who drove her to Seattle.

Typically we let Buca roam the car rather than make her stay in her crate.  This avoids the constant meows of complaint.  But Buca took the opportunity to explore the half-pack car and found herself stuck under the driver’s seat half-way to Seattle.  My husband banned her to the crate for the rest of the trip, and another whole hour of meowing ensued.  I don’t think Eric has recovered yet.

However, we are now nicely settled in our temporary home in Edmonds, WA where Toby and Duchess (our dogs) have visited the dog friendly beach almost every day.  Duchess, our 16 yr old miracle of nature, runs up and down the beach as if she were 6 instead of 16.

Toby on the beach

Toby is fascinated by his new surroundings, having never really been outside of Richmond, BC.  Down the street from our temporary house is a cat colony at a woman’s home.  She feeds and cares for the population, and they are a constant reminder to me of all the rescue work required to take care of so many domestic animals.  Toby finds the many cats fascinating and practically holds his breath as we come around the corner and he prepares to bark at the sleeping fur balls in the driveway.  Remarkably, the cats are undisturbed by Toby’s ‘comments’.  I guess they had seen it all before.

We took Duchess and Toby for donuts and coffee  on Saturday morning to our favorite vegan donut house, Mighty O Donuts, in Tangletown.  Toby and Duchess did great with the crowds and bright happy vegan donut eaters passing by.  It was a wonderful way to have breakfast.  But the warm, fuzzy feeling we always had about going to Mighty O was enhanced even more that morning when the Seattle Humane Society adoption truck pulled up for an adoption event outside the donut shop.  Somehow, I felt we’d found some kindred souls as the volunteers walked the little dogs for adoption and answered questions from passersby.

Duchess chewing a "stick"

Our donut morning was concluded with a ‘power walk’ (as my friend Sonya used to call it) with the dogs in a close heal around the heavily canine trafficked Greenlake Park in Seattle.  Yes, Toby was shocked by joggers, dogs of all sizes, people on rollerblades, skateboards, mini-golf players and brave ducks that had no intention of moving out-of-the-way of foot traffic.  It was Toby’s first visit to a city park like this, so who can blame him for being a little reactive.  Also, Toby has never seen so many squirrels.  But the most notable part of our visit to Greenlake Park (that my husband and I discussed on the way home) was that each and every dog was on a leash.  Yes, there were some, like Toby and Duchess, who were not perfectly behaved, but all were on leash.  Duchess, Toby, Eric and I were all calmer to be around a universal group of responsible dog owners.

Edmonds, WA

Yes, I think we’re gonna like it here…