The Joy of Big Dogs

There are many great things about big dogs, (tumbleweeds of shedded dog hair and horse-sized poops not making the list), but one the things I adore about my German shepherd is that she makes me feel safe.  I keep really odd hours (you can probably tell this from the time stamps on my blog entries), and there’s nothing I love more than being able to go outside at 2:am and to feel perfectly protected with my dog by my side.  Tonight, I realized I hadn’t picked up the mail from our “super mailbox” down the block, so I put on a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and flip-flops (it may be cold, but it’s still Las Vegas), put a leash on the dog, and off we strolled to the mailbox.  It was dark and silent and quite chilly, but I felt comfortable with Eli trotting along beside me.  She’s a beautiful dog, almost 10 years old, weighing about 100 lbs. or so, and she wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she looks so big beside me that I’m sure her presence is a deterrent.  Normally we don’t go for walks, as our yard is almost a quarter of an acre and she runs around out there, so our short mailbox walks are a treat for both of us.  She’s always been so special to me because we’ve been through a lot of turmoil, and I really appreciate the rare moments when it’s just the two of us spending time together.

The past few days have been very hectic, and I’m behind on blog entries, so I’ll write up a quick one and add photos later.  On Friday night we got to see and touch the Stanley Cup at the Las Vegas Wranglers hockey game.  I thought the Stanley Cup would be no big deal to an arena full of Americans, but I think all 6444 people in attendance that night were in line to see the Cup up close.  It was all sort of rushed, so we didn’t get time to really “look” at it—we sort of had a choice to “look” or “take photos”, so we chose the latter.  It was also exciting to meet one of the three official “Keepers of the Cup”, Mike Bolt (the guy who was in a Mastercard commercial a couple of years ago).  I think we got some special attention from him because I was one of only two people (that I noticed) wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, and Bolt is from Toronto.  He talked to us about the score of the Leafs’ game that evening (they lost), I told him I was from Oshawa and had attended Ryerson and he actually knew what I was talking about, and he took our camera and took a photo of the Leafs’ 1967 cup inscription.

Here’s us with “The Duke”, the Wrangler’s mascot:

image

Here’s us with “the holy grail”:

image

Here’s a photo of Mike Bolt and the Cup, so perhaps you’ll recognize him:

image

Here’s a blurry photo of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ 1967 inscription:

image

Mike Bolt wasn’t the only celebrity we saw—Carrot Top was there too, right in front of us.  He was able to jump the line and have a couple of photos taken with the Cup, as I guess he’s a hockey fan (although he’s from Florida, so I’m not sure how that happened).  I’m happy to say that he wasn’t nearly as frightening in person as he seems to be on TV—he was shorter than I expected, and not as severe-looking as he often is.  His eyebrows, for example, were normal—his eyebrows usually scare me.

image

On Saturday, we kept up our busy, exciting schedule and went to see a live show with Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood of “Whose Line is it Anyway”.  It was a mini-version of that show, all improv, with some audience participation.  The show was absolutely hilarious, and at one point I was laughing so hard I literally had tears running down my face—they were just non-stop funny.  I’d absolutely go to see them again, and I highly recommend their show.  As it’s all improv (for example, they’ll have an audience member choose a topic by randomly selecting a page from the Las Vegas Yellow Pages), the show is different every night.  Meeting Colin Mochrie, another Torontonian, would have really made my weekend, but that will have to wait for another time.  We did have the opportunity for a meet and greet with “Delisco” that night at the Hilton, but I had no idea who he was, and now that I know, it still doesn’t really matter.  I’m sure his show is lovely, but he’s no Colin Mochrie or Mike Bolt.

I think that’s a good summary of how the weekend went.  Oh wait, I forgot—we managed to find the last quarter of the Grey Cup game on an obscure channel on our TV (something called “INHD”).  It was a great game, at least, what we saw of it was!  Very exciting, and I’m so glad we managed to see some of it.  This week will be a quiet one as we recover from the Thanksgiving-and-beyond festivities, and besides, Flippy is sick (a cold or flu or some combo of both), so we’ll spend a lot of time at home.  I’ve got to finish getting my Christmas gifts wrapped and shipped so I don’t have to worry about postal delays, but officially, my shopping is fait accompli.  Oh, if you want to see more photos, check out my photo gallery and Flippy’s gallery, as we’ve got more hockey game and Stanley Cup pics there.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/29 at 12:59 AM

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

  1. Your Eli sounds like a beautiful girl.

    Posted by Simply Coll  on  11/30  at  12:22 PM
    2. Page 1 of 1 pages

Name:

Email (required, but will not be made public):

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my details for future comments?

Let me know about new replies to this topic?

Next entry: Education Direct Vet Assistant course... part 2

Previous entry: Happy Thanksgiving, la la la

<< Back to main