Forward...into the past!

Taiwanese Mountain Dog, center. Full Flickr set here!

At the last minute I shot up to NorCal to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. On TG day, I met some good friends and their new Corgi puppy. OMG. Cute! Typically Corgi, she was fearless (but not stupidly so). She will be a GREAT dog when she grows up-- M&K have done everything right: good puppy class, lots of exposure to kids, people and other dogs.

Adorable


I also saw a new life-book dog: a Taiwanese Mountain Dog (aka, Formosan Mountain Dog). Amazing! She was one of the dogs adopted from a group flying Taiwanese street dogs back to the US to be adopted (very hard life for a dog in Taiwan). She is probably a mix-- but look at that tiny, thin body on those legs! It's like they ran out of whippet body parts, so they stuck a spaniel body on those whippet legs. She is beautiful and sweet, but those proportions are startling! Also, notice the spaniel-like head and stop. Smart, sweet and agile. Really interesting!

The first thing we did when we got back to L.A. was take a hike up the Newhall Pass to work off some of the turkey. This is pretty much a straight-up hill climb, with the usual fantastic views. We started the hike at Golden Hour: the point around sunset when everything glows as the sun sets.

We discovered that the heart rocks circle had been greatly expanded since we last were here. I love seeing these informal rock groupings and stacking. Perfect place for pics of the dogs! Much love.



I also found a cindar block at the turnaround of the hike. This is exactly what I'd been looking for as something for a project I'm trying, so I tried to lug it back the two miles to the car. Just when I thought I'd hide it in some bushes (about 200 yards later) and come back and move it a little at a time, I realized that this weighed about what I'd lost in weight-- so as an experiment I determined to lug it all the way back to remind myself of what it was like before. Success on several levels: I got the block back to the car and got a stark reminder of what that much weight does to you. It's amazing what a little OCD can accomplish!