In some parts, there's still a bit of summer left. What better than to grab an iced coffee, head to the beach, and read a good book about man's best friend? Let's face it, most of these books about our favorite four-legged friends end the same. We quickly fall in love with the protagonist, whether it be Marley, Merle, or Enzo. We share in their many adventures, and then we suffer with their owners as we read about their deaths. Nevertheless, we gravitate to these books and in each one, find a different lesson: how to be mischievous, how to be independent and dependent at the same time, and how to love unconditionally.
So, if you're looking for another lesson taught by our beloved, furry friends, I'd highly recommend Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote, Marley and Me by John Grogan, and the Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Don't forget to bring Kleenex with you when you get to the end, and if you've recently lost a dog, you might want to wait to read these once you have a new puppy.
Blog For the Mostly Off Leash Dog!
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
The Loss of a Good Dog
With sadness of her passing, Rad Dog would like to honor Fiona, "the Ambassador" to the Sofields, who have been recent guest bloggers.
When we pick out our new found friends from a litter or from the local shelter, we're quite sure that they will become integral components of our lives, but we rarely give thought to how much our furry friends become part of our family, teach us, and fill our hearts. Yet when that dreadful day comes and they are no longer with us, we realize just how much they meant to us. But then we're left with figuring out what to do with the empty space in our lives and hearts, how to honor our pets, and how to continue living as they have taught us. I would imagine, many, like our friends Ruth and Darrell, turn to running. After all, isn't that what you were conditioned to do each morning while your dog was alive. So, if you're suffering from the recent loss of your most faithful walking or running partner, go on and lace up those shoes. Be it sun or rain, live like your dog taught you and go for a run. Trust me, you'll feel better.
We invite you to share your stories about running after the loss of a loved dog. Here is Darrell's tribute to Fiona as well as a recent article in Runners World.
Running After a Loved One Dies
A Very Good Dog
When we pick out our new found friends from a litter or from the local shelter, we're quite sure that they will become integral components of our lives, but we rarely give thought to how much our furry friends become part of our family, teach us, and fill our hearts. Yet when that dreadful day comes and they are no longer with us, we realize just how much they meant to us. But then we're left with figuring out what to do with the empty space in our lives and hearts, how to honor our pets, and how to continue living as they have taught us. I would imagine, many, like our friends Ruth and Darrell, turn to running. After all, isn't that what you were conditioned to do each morning while your dog was alive. So, if you're suffering from the recent loss of your most faithful walking or running partner, go on and lace up those shoes. Be it sun or rain, live like your dog taught you and go for a run. Trust me, you'll feel better.
We invite you to share your stories about running after the loss of a loved dog. Here is Darrell's tribute to Fiona as well as a recent article in Runners World.
Running After a Loved One Dies
A Very Good Dog
Traveling with the Ambassador – Part 2
We know we have a unique situation living in Switzerland compared to in the US. We can take our dog into most public places. At restaurants, it isn’t unusual for a waitress to bring Fiona a bowl of water, sometimes with a dog bone or a slice of meat draped over the side of the bowl. The fact that she can go most places combined with not owning a car means we have to be in public places with people we don’t know; fortunately, odds are good that someone in that crowd is interested enough in Fiona The Ambassador to start a conversation. We’ve had many fun experiences with her traveling locally and in other countries.
We recently did a trip to southern France and Italy with Fiona. We took our bikes and the kinder cart and used trains to get us between bike rides. I think I am the lucky one because I usually ride behind Darrell and Fiona. I get to see the reactions of people as we ride by them. When they see a dog in a cart, they poke their partner in the side and point, they laugh out loud and say something about “hund”, “chien”, or “cane” depending on what country we are in, they clap, they try to hitchhike a ride, they smile and wave, they take pictures… At a market in southern Italy, the cheese vendor stopped us and had a customer bring Fiona a sample of cheese. At a perched village in Provence, a young boy ran back for his push scooter, so he could accompany Darrell and Fiona all the way up the hill. She met and was petted by people from Italy, France, England, Scotland and Australia. She had a massage by a friendly hotel owner in Orange, France. She slept under the desk of another hotel owner in Avignon. She spit up on the floor of a hotel in Marseille in front of the hotel clerk who genuinely told us it was OK (when I told her Fiona wasn’t used to the French food, she laughed and gave Fiona a nice rub to make her feel better).
Spring has only just started here, but we’ll be on our bikes more and open to the connections made through The Ambassador as we explore the local area. Today for example, we went to see a castle in a nearby town, The Ambassador in tow behind Darrell’s bike. We rode by what looked like a restaurant with 4 people sitting at a table outside. As soon as they saw us, all 4 laughed heartily, but in a friendly way. Since we’re used to this by now, we waved and kept going. On our way back, we waved again, but this time realized it wasn’t a restaurant, but was a wine tasting room (a WyStubi). We stopped and hung out for about an hour talking to the 2 customers and the vintners. It turns out they are only at this WyStubi one weekend a month and are at their primary winery on Lake Geneva the rest of the month. By the time we left, Darrell and I had plans to do a bike ride through their part of the country with a stop at the winery as a main attraction – Fiona will join us, of course!
About the guest bloggers – Ruth and Darrell Sofield are living near Zurich until September, 2011. They are keeping a blog of their adventures here. Fiona has given up on the common leash and only wears the Release-N-Run from Rad Dog. It works as well in the urban environments of Switzerland as in the backcountry. Have fun connecting!
http://www.amazingmapsswissadventures.blogspot.co
We recently did a trip to southern France and Italy with Fiona. We took our bikes and the kinder cart and used trains to get us between bike rides. I think I am the lucky one because I usually ride behind Darrell and Fiona. I get to see the reactions of people as we ride by them. When they see a dog in a cart, they poke their partner in the side and point, they laugh out loud and say something about “hund”, “chien”, or “cane” depending on what country we are in, they clap, they try to hitchhike a ride, they smile and wave, they take pictures… At a market in southern Italy, the cheese vendor stopped us and had a customer bring Fiona a sample of cheese. At a perched village in Provence, a young boy ran back for his push scooter, so he could accompany Darrell and Fiona all the way up the hill. She met and was petted by people from Italy, France, England, Scotland and Australia. She had a massage by a friendly hotel owner in Orange, France. She slept under the desk of another hotel owner in Avignon. She spit up on the floor of a hotel in Marseille in front of the hotel clerk who genuinely told us it was OK (when I told her Fiona wasn’t used to the French food, she laughed and gave Fiona a nice rub to make her feel better).
Spring has only just started here, but we’ll be on our bikes more and open to the connections made through The Ambassador as we explore the local area. Today for example, we went to see a castle in a nearby town, The Ambassador in tow behind Darrell’s bike. We rode by what looked like a restaurant with 4 people sitting at a table outside. As soon as they saw us, all 4 laughed heartily, but in a friendly way. Since we’re used to this by now, we waved and kept going. On our way back, we waved again, but this time realized it wasn’t a restaurant, but was a wine tasting room (a WyStubi). We stopped and hung out for about an hour talking to the 2 customers and the vintners. It turns out they are only at this WyStubi one weekend a month and are at their primary winery on Lake Geneva the rest of the month. By the time we left, Darrell and I had plans to do a bike ride through their part of the country with a stop at the winery as a main attraction – Fiona will join us, of course!
About the guest bloggers – Ruth and Darrell Sofield are living near Zurich until September, 2011. They are keeping a blog of their adventures here. Fiona has given up on the common leash and only wears the Release-N-Run from Rad Dog. It works as well in the urban environments of Switzerland as in the backcountry. Have fun connecting!
http://www.amazingmapsswissadventures.blogspot.co
Friday, May 13, 2011
Living with The Ambassador – Part 1
My husband (Darrell) and I usually live in Bellingham, WA, but when we got the chance to temporarily move to Switzerland, we jumped at the chance and have been here since September. Knowing that we would be here for a year, we couldn’t imagine leaving our 13 year old dog (Fiona) behind, so she is now a Swiss dog and we’ve never looked back on that decision. She has her own pet “passport”, has learned to love cheese, and now knows a few German phrases.
The three of us have a different life style here, with one of the biggest changes being that we don’t own a car. All of our travel is done by train or bike so we needed to buy Fiona a train pass and a kinder cart that attaches to the back of Darrell’s bike for her to ride in. She quickly mastered the train and has even done an unplanned trip by herself (that is another story).
The train has turned out to be a marvelous place to meet people, and having Fiona along has made it so easy that we call her “The Ambassador”. For us living in a foreign land, connecting to the people is part of the adventure and helps us become part of this world. Often the connections are fleeting – for only as long as the next stop, but sometimes we make what are likely to be lifelong friendships, or at the very least Facebook friendships. You know right away that someone is going to start talking to you because of Fiona. They change their body position, look at Fiona, glance at you, lingering looks at Fiona, eye contact with you, and then the conversation begins. It has turned out to be great practice for our German as well, all you need to do is listen for a few key words when someone is looking at your dog, but talking to you –for example, if we hear a phrase that includes the German words for “old” or “breed”, we know they are asking: how old is she? or what breed is she? Conversation then can continue into more complex topics like if she is from the USA, how we brought her here, if she likes it here, and so on… We learn about their dogs if they have one, about their experience in the US if they’ve been, where they live now, about their children… and this all starts because of The Ambassador.
We are lucky that Fiona is a mellow dog. She doesn’t bark and has intelligent eyes rimmed in black eye-liner that she uses to lure people in. This happens when we are not using the trains also. If we leave her alone outside of the grocery store, we can come back to find people petting her. We’ve been able to use her to meet our neighbors – for example our downstairs neighbor has a little girl (Jasmine) who is afraid of dogs. Darrell helped her learn how to approach Fiona and pet her. Now, anytime Jasmine is outside when we come home with Fiona, she comes running up to us shouting out Fiona’s name, approaches her cautiously and pets her. We have other neighbors that often come and take Fiona for walks because they like to show her off to their friends in our village.
Being from the Pacific Northwest, we do like microbrewed beers, which are a challenge to find here – but find one we did. They are only open 1 day a month, so we don’t go often. It is in a small village and most of the patrons are locals. The first time we went, Fiona found a way to stick her head under a stranger’s hand for petting; that hand complied for most of the night. The next time we went was 2 months later and the owner of that hand was there. He recognized Fiona first and then gave us a big, warm hello. We now know several of the cast of characters from this village and always feel welcome, just like Cheers… where everyone knows Fiona’s name.
About the guest bloggers – Ruth and Darrell Sofield are living near Zurich until September, 2011. They are keeping a blog of their adventures here. Fiona has given up on the common leash and only wears the Release-N-Run from Rad Dog. It works as well in the urban environments of Switzerland as in the backcountry. Have fun connecting!
http://www.amazingmapsswissadventures.blogspot.com/
The three of us have a different life style here, with one of the biggest changes being that we don’t own a car. All of our travel is done by train or bike so we needed to buy Fiona a train pass and a kinder cart that attaches to the back of Darrell’s bike for her to ride in. She quickly mastered the train and has even done an unplanned trip by herself (that is another story).
The train has turned out to be a marvelous place to meet people, and having Fiona along has made it so easy that we call her “The Ambassador”. For us living in a foreign land, connecting to the people is part of the adventure and helps us become part of this world. Often the connections are fleeting – for only as long as the next stop, but sometimes we make what are likely to be lifelong friendships, or at the very least Facebook friendships. You know right away that someone is going to start talking to you because of Fiona. They change their body position, look at Fiona, glance at you, lingering looks at Fiona, eye contact with you, and then the conversation begins. It has turned out to be great practice for our German as well, all you need to do is listen for a few key words when someone is looking at your dog, but talking to you –for example, if we hear a phrase that includes the German words for “old” or “breed”, we know they are asking: how old is she? or what breed is she? Conversation then can continue into more complex topics like if she is from the USA, how we brought her here, if she likes it here, and so on… We learn about their dogs if they have one, about their experience in the US if they’ve been, where they live now, about their children… and this all starts because of The Ambassador.
We are lucky that Fiona is a mellow dog. She doesn’t bark and has intelligent eyes rimmed in black eye-liner that she uses to lure people in. This happens when we are not using the trains also. If we leave her alone outside of the grocery store, we can come back to find people petting her. We’ve been able to use her to meet our neighbors – for example our downstairs neighbor has a little girl (Jasmine) who is afraid of dogs. Darrell helped her learn how to approach Fiona and pet her. Now, anytime Jasmine is outside when we come home with Fiona, she comes running up to us shouting out Fiona’s name, approaches her cautiously and pets her. We have other neighbors that often come and take Fiona for walks because they like to show her off to their friends in our village.
Being from the Pacific Northwest, we do like microbrewed beers, which are a challenge to find here – but find one we did. They are only open 1 day a month, so we don’t go often. It is in a small village and most of the patrons are locals. The first time we went, Fiona found a way to stick her head under a stranger’s hand for petting; that hand complied for most of the night. The next time we went was 2 months later and the owner of that hand was there. He recognized Fiona first and then gave us a big, warm hello. We now know several of the cast of characters from this village and always feel welcome, just like Cheers… where everyone knows Fiona’s name.
About the guest bloggers – Ruth and Darrell Sofield are living near Zurich until September, 2011. They are keeping a blog of their adventures here. Fiona has given up on the common leash and only wears the Release-N-Run from Rad Dog. It works as well in the urban environments of Switzerland as in the backcountry. Have fun connecting!
http://www.amazingmapsswissadventures.blogspot.com/
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Rad Dog in Real Simple Magazine
| Rad Dog reaches new customers as a result of the Release N Run being included in "Products that Solve a Problem" in the March Issue of Real Simple Magazine, page 46. Thanks to Real Simple and to all of our new customers. |  |
Monday, January 24, 2011
Bellingham Herald Article About Rad Dog
Thanks to the Bellingham Herald for the feature on Rad Dog and the Release N Run!
You can check out the article here Bellingham business' dog collar to be featured in Real Simple Magazine
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Release N Run featured
This last week, the Release N Run was featured by Stephen Regenold in an article on the Gear Junkie. The Gear Junkie is a renowned blog that posts product reviews and news in the outdoor world.
The article was picked up by the Billings Gazette, Casper's Star Tribune, and The Record Search Light.
The article was picked up by the Billings Gazette, Casper's Star Tribune, and The Record Search Light.
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