my dog on vacation

I know that many of you enjoyed seeing some pictures of my adopted dog, Lola, and some of her friends in an earlier post. Well, believe me! I have a lot more photos of Lola to share with you and thought I'd make a post of it today. Call it procrastination, call it a necessary break from CAD, call it whatever you'd like. Here are some of my favourite photos of Lola on vacation. The best part? These were all taken in the last year or so. We do a lot of travelling around this beautiful part of the world together and Lola loves a good hike or swim, though, as I've mentioned previously, she hates camping. At the bottom of this post I'll tell you a little more about the places we visited in these photos.

1. Lola in the rainforest around Powell River on the Sunshine Coast. We love going to visit our very good friend up there. Lola is maybe not a fan of two ferry rides, but she loves the drive and the inevitable hikes that we take her on.

2. Okay, I wish that I could remember the name of this place. It's about an hour past Hope here in British Columbia. You have to drive up this sketchy, winding, very high road to get to an amazing lookout point that was bustling with marmots. So beautiful.

3. Since we're apartment dwellers sometime we just have to visit a nice lush lawn. Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver.

4-5. My friend Lara's cabin. This was one of my favourite mini vacations last year. So much dock-sitting and swimming and sunshine. Oh, I can't wait for summer.

Inspired by Micaela's post last week asking her readers to share their vacation photos, I'm wondering if you have any photos of your pets on vacation that you'd like to share. Send them to me at sadiedesignsca at gmail dot com with the subject line "pet vacation" and I'll publish them next week. Make sure you tell me where you took the photo and send me a link to your blog if you've got one!

meet my friend and some of her friends

This is Lola, our border collie x, straight from the Cochrane SPCA in Alberta. We got Lola just about three and a half years ago. Since then, she's come along with us on many adventures, from Powell River, BC, to Portland, OR, and moved with us to Vancouver.

I've been spending a lot of time with Lola lately (and, well, always...) and we've really gotten to know each other. I think she has come so far from the orphaned dog that she was when we first adopted her. She can walk on a leash, play with other dogs, run around at the beach, and even manages to lay down in the car sometimes, rather than just running around in the back seat. Having Lola as a pet has never been easy, but it has always been rewarding. I think this might be the case with a lot of rescue dogs and I am a huge advocate for adopting animals. A man who runs a kennel that Lola used to go to in Alberta told us something that I'll never forget. He said, "When people have SPCA dogs I just tell them to never give up." How many times I've said that to myself I don't even know. 

Lola and her pal Bingo

Lola and her BFF Fergie, my mom's Westie

My mom always says that Lola is lucky we picked her. I think we're lucky we found her. Watching Lola's improvements has been so great over the years and since day one she has been a loving and loyal and totally crazy member of our family. I love her so much, think she's the most awesome dog in the world, and just wanted to tell you all a little more about her. We went on a two hour winter beach walk today with a friend and her dog, just a small example of the great things we do together. Lola dreams of being able to help out in the kitchen or drive someday. Her two favourite things are FOOD and CAR, I think her only real dislikes are lettuce and camping. In these photos she's with us in Deception Pass, WA, Powell River, BC, Vancouver, BC, and Mayne Island, BC, respectively. Do you have pets, too?