Adventure Dog Blog

A camp for dogs and their people!

With seminars and activities for you and your dog, you can choose to be active, or just sit back and relax together. Activities for dogs in past camps have included things like agility, crafts, costume contest, makeovers, flyball, scouting, frisbee, lure coursing, pet tricks, tracking, and more.

Accomodations are offered in dorms for females, males, or couples, private rooms, tent or RV, and offsite.

Being a parent, something that I noted is that you can bring your child to camp also as long as you can supervise them and your dog(s)!

Check out the Dog Days of Wisconsin website for more details. Have fun at camp with your dogs!

My dogs were in need of some travel dishes for when we take long trips by car, or for those days we want to do more than just hit the park for one hour.

I saw a set of canvas travel bowls for dogs made by Outward Hound at the store before leaving for a long road trip and thought I’d try them out. This particular set is a food dish and water dish all in one easy to carry bag. Put food into the bottom compartment, zip the top half back on, and then fill the top with water and use the handy drawstring to close it up.

I wasn’t sure whether the drawstring would keep the water secure in the bag while driving around, and I didn’t know if Mr. Meaty would want to put his head into a bag to lap up his water, but neither of these things turned out to be issues in the end.

I filled up the bottom with food, zipped on the top and filled that with water. I closed the drawstring and stood the bag up behind my seat in the truck. We travelled for seven hours, getting in and out several times, and using the bowls twice. Water didn’t spill anywhere as the bag stayed upright without any issues, and Mr. Meaty was happy enough to dive his face into the bag to drink when he was thirsty. My issue was keeping Anna’s big nose out of the bag long enough for Mr. Meaty to drink too!

So far I’m really pleased with the Outward Hound Food n’ Water Port-a-Bowl. If you’d like to give one a try, you can buy them at Active K9 online.  Get travel bowls for your dogs!

I have had so much fun with my dogs at the beach, both at lakes in Canada and along the coast of Mexico. My dog Anna loves to swim and it’s so funny to go under the water and look up at her, her legs churning and her fat butt floating. Mr. Meaty likes to run and play in the sand and get just a little wet along the edge of the water. He’s always covered in sand, and if you don’t look out, he’s rolling all over your towels and blankets to get dry. Dog hair and sand everywhere!

It’s really hard to find beaches that will allow dogs, especially in North America. A really popular dog beach is the Huntington Dog Beach in California , located 37 miles south of Los Angeles. The dog beach is one mile where your dog is free to roam and play offleash, both in the water and in the sand. The only rules are to maintain control of your dogs at all times and to pick up any waste and dispose of it in the trash cans.

Visited by more than 100,000 off leash dogs each year, you might be surprised to learn that dog beach is renowned for being “the cleanest beach in the twelve mile stretch of Huntington City beaches”, according to the President of the Huntington Dog Beach.

Visit the Huntington Dog Beach website for maps and directions to the beach, information on making donations, and even purchasing hats and shirts!

I’ve always wanted to take my big dog Anna bike riding with me in the summer, but the thought of trying to ride my bike while she’s straining to run as fast as she wants, and possibly trying to cross in front of me… well… it doesn’t sound like fun at all.

The WalkyDog is an attachment for your bike that you can attach your dog to. That way, you still have your hands free for riding but your dog is on leash and under control. Your dog can run along beside your bicycle, but isn’t free to run in front of you or take off chasing a cat.

Attaching with a simple clamp, the WalkyDog is easy to attach and remove as you need it. It actually has internal springs for shock absorption should your dog jerk away to help prevent you from losing your balance. You can remove the WalkyDog with a quick release for when you aren’t using it, or to easily start walking your dog after you park your bike.

Apparently you can even attach two WalkyDogs to your bike and take two dogs out at a time. Now that sounds a little bit like too much trouble to me, but using a WalkyDog for one dog sounds like it might make the whole issue of riding a bike with your dog a lot easier.

You can view movies of the WalkyDog in action, get more information and purchase this item at SitStay.com.  Ride your bike and take your dogs!

When we move back to Canada from Mexico, we will be moving to a smaller city than before, and not only am I dreading that this city will have very few offleash parks, but I know it’s going to be hard for the dogs to be on leash at all after our fun here in the jungle. My dogs like to run free!

My big dog in particular requires a lot of heavy exercise or she gets fat and I’ve been trying to think of ways I can keep her trim. Poking around on the web, I remembered Flyball, a sport for dogs that can be played by any breed of dog, including mixed breeds like Anna.

In Flyball, teams of dogs run a relay race in which they run across a setup of four hurdles and then hit a springboard to release a tennis ball which they have to return to their owner back at the starting line. When one dog returns with the ball, the next dog is released.

Lots of people play Flyball with their dogs as an opportunity to have fun and get their dog some wicked exercise. It’s especially good for herding dogs and other high energy breeds that really need to “work” to be happy. With Flyball, you can also compete, and the North American Flyball Association holds sanctioned events in 39 states and provinces.

You can get all kinds of information about Flyball for your dogs on the NAFA website, including “what is flyball”, the rulebook, tournament listings, and official world records.

Skijoring is a sport done in winter in which a person on skis is pulled by one or more dogs that are attached to them by harness. It’s kind of like dog sledding, but without the sled!

My dog Anna is huge and would be perfect for learning to skijor, but apprently any dog that is thirty pounds or more is a good candidate to learn skijoring. To skijor, all you need is cross country skiing equipment, a harness for your dog, a skijoring belt for you, and the tow rope that goes between.

Skijoring is done on a purely recreational basis all the way up to world championships, with activities like sprint racing and distance racing.

I found Skijor Now to be full of great information about getting started skijoring, including the sale of equipment you need, training tips, and a gallery of images.

I’m not sure I could ever do any mushing with a dog like Mr. Meaty, but Anna is a big dog who I think would thrill at the idea of pulling a sled. If you’re a “beginning musher”, the page says this is an excellent sled for you and your dogs.

This sled was designed by an eight grade technology information class. They used conventional drafting techniques along with a computer to do the drawings. At the end of the article, there is an image of the finished product.

I don’t think I’ll ever have the initiative to build a dog sled. In fact, I probably won’t ever try to make Anna pull me around on anything bigger than a regular tobaggan in winter. But if you’re looking into mushing and have some talent working with wood, you might just get a kick out of this project!

Visit this page to learn how to build your own dogsled for your dogs!

Located in Cincinatti, Ohio just forty minutes from the downtown core in Woodland Lakes. Enjoy a four day retreat with your dog and work on dog activities like herding, freestyle, field events, obedience, agility, and flyball.

In the Adventures section, the site lists information about dog activities like flyball, rally-o, herding, freestyle, obedience, agility, lure-coursing, field events, disk, and swimming. A typical day consists of three morning dog classes and two afternoon dog classes. There are lectures, discussion groups, adventure activities for dogs, and evening activities with dogs.

Visit the Dogskills Adventure website for more details.

Do you like to take your dog motorcycling in a sidecar? Maybe your dog likes to ride in the back of your truck or go boating. The Helmet is perfect for dog adventures as it will protect your dog’s head from wind blown objects.

The Helmet comes in “Bone” white or “Wet Nose” Black. The Helmet will even fit dogs with stand-up ears as it has customizable foam pads that are designed to fit between the ears.

The Helmet sells for $26.95 and you can buy one at Zoomer Gear.

The scorpion is part of the arachnida family, the same as the spider. You will find them in places all over the world, and the majority of them cause no great harm to large mammals like dogs and humans.

However, there are a few species of scorpion that can cause great harm, including death, so it’s always important to be careful when you encounter one. A general rule of thumb, according to The Scorpion Files, is that scorpions with large powerful claws are usually harmless, whereas the ones with thin slender claws can be dangerous.

Particularly dangerous scorpions can be found in the Southern United States, Mexico, Central America, the Carribean, South America, Asia, Western and Southern Africa, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and across the Mediterranean from Spain to the Middle East.

Before we panic about scorpions, you should know that they are not terribly agressive. They are afraid of humans and other large potential predators and try their best to run away. Scorpions are noctural so you are most likely to encounter them at night. During the day, scorpions are often hiding under rocks, in piles of wood or leaves, or inside your shoes. Always shake out your shoes before putting them on, shake out towels and clothes that have been lying around, and check your bed before getting in it! For your dogs, the best thing you can do is keep them inside at night.

While in Mexico, my big dog Anna was stung by a scorpion. She left my bedroom and turned to sniff something on the day bed when she pulled back her head suddenly and began to shake it. She started smacking her lips and rubbing her nose with her paw. I knew something had happened. After searching for awhile, I found a scorpion between the mattress of the day bed and the wall. Luckily, the village we lived in had a very good vet and I was able to call her immediately on the phone. We walked over to her house, and within fifteen minutes of being stung, Anna was receiving two shots of antihistamines.

We were fortunate, while the scorpion that stung her was known to cause fatalities, Anna never showed any signs of being stung beyond the initial shaking of her head and smacking of her lips. The vet said that she’s seen two reactions in dogs to scorpions here. One is when the dog gets glassy eyed and tends to stare off into space, the other is when they seem to lose all coordination, a condition she said was very scary, even for her as a vet.

But what is a person to do when there is no vet around? There appears to be very little you can do about scorpion stings in animals. According to Pet Place there is no home care for venemous scorpion bites. Treatment for scorpion stings tends to be supportive, and you just have to let things run their course. Pain can be managed by applying ice to the site of the bite. My vet administered antihistamines to help combat the body’s reaction to the venom. The best treatment seems to be avoiding getting stung in the first place.

Visit The Scorpion Files to learn more about scorpions.