I suppose I should apologize for the lateness of this post, since we got back from Carmel a couple of weeks ago.  I basically got lazy and didn't figure that anyone really cared much about our adventures upstate with Bernie bin Laden and Linda. Those members of the forum who were actually there and survived the experience were going through the usual post-trauma stress counseling that's needed after an encounter with Bernie bin Laden, so I thought they wouldn't want to relive it.  And frankly, I wasn't that anxious to admit that BBL has now branched out into eco-terrorism as well (more on that later).  But my wife Diane (aka Maximutt) got a request from Jim and Rene for an update, so here it is.

Bernie had some major behavior issues last time we were in Carmel, mostly involving barking uncontrollably at every dog in sight while walking around town, to the point where we couldn't take him anywhere.  We've been working with a trainer ever since then to calm down his leash aggression issues. Part of that is giving him plenty of off-leash time combined with treats whenever he sees another dog, to help him associate other dogs with something good, even though he's on leash.  So we were a little nervous about this trip, even though he's been much better lately, and we were armed with a massive amount of treats to keep him calm.  

I'm proud to say that he did very well when we walked around town the next day, and we're now pretty sure we can go out in public again without undue embarrassment.  For those of you whose dogs bark excessively on leash, here's the solution our trainers gave us.  Get a bag of "high-value" treats - not just crappy Milk Bones or some generic dog treat they tire of easily, but something like beef jerky that they really go nuts over - and one of those clickers you see at the front counter of Petco or Petsmart.  Have the treats in one hand while you’re walking, and the clicker in the other.  Whenever another dog approaches, watch your dog and wait until he sees it, then IMMEDIATELY give him a click and a treat.  As long as your dog is staring at the other one, keep clicking and treating.  The idea is to take your dog's negative association (that he's confined on leash while another dog is coming), an turn it into a positive one (whenever another dog appears, he gets a treat).  We'd been working to establish this association in Bernie for a few months, and it paid off.  You have to be quick on the draw and start stuffing him with treats the second he sees whatever usually sets him off - if you wait until after he starts barking, it's too late.  That meant there were a few points when I was shoving handfuls of treats down his gullet while he growled and grumbled at dogs that always set off his hatred (poodles, sheepdogs, or anything else with enough hair to change its appearance from that of a "normal" looking dog).  But for the most part, he behaved himself.  Linda kept busy by peeing on everything in sight, and occasionally snorting and dumb-hopping at wheelchairs, old people using walkers, parents with strollers, etc. - anything her little pea brain processed as being out of the ordinary.  The more embarrassing to us, the better.

Unfortunately, all those treats had a side effect.  The night we arrived, we went out to dinner, where the dogs flopped all over the patio…

…..then headed back to our hotel room to settle down for what was supposed to be a relaxing night after a long drive… or so I thought.  Unfortunately, BBL's digestive system had other plans.  I'd taken him to the beach the day before, where as usual he swallowed a gallon or two of the Pacific Ocean's finest while swimming around, then spent the rest of the day having what we not so fondly call "mud butt."  The next day's diet of junk food (like the cheeseburger we gave him for lunch and the multitude of treats he got at dinner later), didn't help.  He woke us up twice that night with panicked whining, at which point I had to get up, get dressed, and stagger outside the hotel trying to find a patch of ground where Bernie was willing to poop while on leash (he's weird about that).  Suffice it to say that there are now two planter boxes in Carmel that will never be the same.  And I didn't get anything resembling sleep that night.  

But the best part of the trip, of course, was our visit to Mill Valley to hook up with the Nor Cal tripawds crew.  At this point, most of us are now former tripawd parents, but that hasn’t stopped us from getting together whenever possible.  Karen (aka krun15) was there with her pugs Obie and Tani…

…Bob (aka Cherry's dad) showed up with his wife Emily and dogs Chloe and Kara...

…and the reigning tripawd princess Shelby held court with her parents Jack and Cindi. A lot of fun was had by all…

…until Bernie bin Laden showed his true nature by hijacking Princess Shelby’s wagon.

After leaving Mill Valley, we stopped at the Golden Gate…

…then met our friend Mary and another long-term Nor Cal tripawd, Cemil, at a brewery owned by some of Mary’s friends (the walk to the Mill Valley dog park is too rough on Cemil these days).  

There we discovered that dogs are quite fond of the used hops left over from brewing, which they give Mary to use as chicken feed.  It fed Cemil and Bernie nicely, too, though we were shocked to discover that Linda, aka “The White Gobbler,” had little interest in it even though it was food and it was free (her usual criteria for loving something).  But Bernie inhaled a big bowl of it, and best of all, it firmed up his mud-butt, which took a great deal of horror out of our lives.

Bernie being Bernie, though, he had to commit a few acts of terrorism before we left.  The first happened the next morning, when we were walking along Carmel Beach.  Diane found a path up the bluffs at the north end of the beach, which we took until we reached the top and found ourselves on the outskirts of the world famous Pebble Beach golf course.  We stood up there admiring the view and the flawless greens, which no doubt take thousands of dollars to maintain in such perfect condition.  After about thirty seconds of enjoying the view, each other’s company, and the general contentment of being somewhere perfect and in no hurry to leave, Bernie got bored and left.  He did so by rocketing past us across the aforementioned flawless lawn, then stopping in the middle of the green to hike up his leg and throw a whiz on world famous Pebble Beach.  So to all pro golfers out there, sorry about that dead spot on the 10^th green.

But that was just a warm-up for later that day, when he committed his ultimate offense against the environment.  We took a drive down the coast to Big Sur, looking for a secluded beach we’d found on a previous trip.  We found it, parked, and hiked down to the sand so we could walk along the shore.  There were a few people on the beach this time (we’d previously visited in winter, when it was pretty much deserted), but we mostly had it to ourselves.  We eventually came to a point where a beautiful little brook ran down from the hills, waterfalled onto the beach, and wound its way across the sand until it reached the sea.  It was so pristine and unspoiled that I had to use my panorama camera to snap a shore-to-shore shot of Diane and the dogs in front of it.

And as soon as I finished, Bernie bin Laden did an about-face, pranced happily into the babbling brook, then squatted and dropped a massive steaming turd right in the middle of it, thus destroying the entire ecosystem of Central California.  We saw the grass wither and die, whales go belly-up offshore, and pelicans falling out of the sky.  So to all of you whose children will now never behold the glory of Big Sur, sorry about that.