Hello Everyone in Leesburg and areas close by!   Tomorrow is the BIG DAY we have been waiting for.  Ten long years in the making.  Can you believe it?   We have our very own Dog Park.   It is the First Public Dog Park in Loudoun County!   The first!  Off Leash.  Fun, Fun, Fun.

Our ribbon cutting is tomorrow at 10am.    And the Mayor of Leesburg will be there!    My "sis" Lydia has been very involved in getting this park off the ground.  Or, on the ground, so to speak.   And with her - Mary Harper and her husband Dale Goodson, Cathy Chianese (who is one of our clients, BTW) and David Ulrich and  Sandy Kane and my "bro" Pat Lewsen.

The Leesburg Dog Park is located in Olde Izaak Walton Park and guess what else.   To get to the Dog Park you must pass right by The Fractured Prune, so get  yourself some donuts - going or coming ----- and if you are dirty after your park adventure you can go to Top Dog Groomers, also right next door.  This happens to be just a Quirk of Fate, but oh well....it worked out perfectly, didn't it?

I am so excited.  I could just pee.   (But to my Twitter friends ---- yes, yes, yes, I know.  Peeing outside only).

To find out some more information about The Park itself, you can wake up your Mouse Person and ask him to rush you to Leesburg Dogs at Olde Izaak Walton Park   

On a sad note, our friends Mary Harper and Dale Goodson, we the parents of my friend Gibson, and sadly Gibson crossed The Rainbow Bridge on Monday April 27.    Gibson was only five years old, just about the age of my older sister Hannah when Hannah left us.    Hannah and Gibson would have LOVED the dog park.   I think they would have wanted to go there every single day.

Thanks to our Bev Hollis  we have this wonderful photo of Gibson.

                            

It is a sad, sad day when one of our friends crosses to The Bridge.   But I must tell you, and please don't think this is strange, that I talk to my "sis" Princess Daisy almost every single night and she tells me everything that is going on up there, and I fill her in on what is happening down here on Earth.     Daisy has organized shopping trips, QVC Watching Parties, Bunco Games and is giving a course on the perfect BlueBerry Facial.   She promises that one day she will send us a letter so we have a better idea of life at The Bridge, but for now, she is quite busy.

A few years ago, my Mom's Forever Dog, Marvin, passed away at 16 years old.    He was quite a dog, I understand, and no, I am not jealous of his being a forever dog.   Every parent has one of those, and us dogs just understand how it is.   Marvin was the Original Nanny, and remotely taught me everything I know about that job.

After Marvin passed away, one of our very earliest and dearest clients, Caesar Murto followed him.   Caesar's parents were very distraught and one day they got this letter from Marvin postmarked from The Bridge.

"Dear Murto Family

You have never met me, but I wanted to introduce myself.  My name is Marvin Best and you know my Earth Mom, Patti, with whom I lived for 16 years.  Recently I had the pleasure of meeting your dog, Caesar, and I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you that he has checked in with me and he is o.k.

Caesar arrived a couple of days ago.  I don't know if you are familiar with the way we do things up here, but it takes a few days for the new dogs to check in.  They spend a couple of days at the Heavenly Hospital and usually at least one or two more days at the Sublime Spa.
Caesar spent a couple of extra days at the hospital, so his eye could be cleared up, and then we wanted to get a little weight on him before he crossed The RainBow Bridge.  All is well now, and I must say, he looks great.  Not a day over three and boy, can he chase the tennis ball!

I'm the Official Greeter for all dogs who have every been loved and cared for by Patti and Lydia, including their own.  On Earth, I was referred to as The Nanny Dog, since my family suspected that I should have been a girl ----- that's how much I loved puppies and taking care of the grooming and washing up chores at my house.  When I first arrived I missed my Earth-Friends, Daisy and Jethro, terribly; but then I got settled in and reconnected with Birkenstock, my Shar-Pei buddy from years gone by, and since he still requires constant licking with all those wrinkles, I am busy, busy, busy.

First thing I did was check Caesar's ears and eyes, but they did a great job at the Spa and so he'll only require my sevices once or twice a week to keep him looking good.  I rounded up Cricket Weise and Rusty Carnegie, two of my Cocker buddes who had arrived here just a few months before I did, and introduced them to Caesar.  Talk about a Gang of Three!   Those gusy are crazy!   On Earth, Rusty was deaf as a post and Cricket was in bad shape (between his advanced age and all his health issues), but up here, we are all around Three Years Old, and plan to stay that way.  Most of us want to be rememberd at the point in our lives when we were at our prime.  A few times, with little puppies, they just remain the age they were when they arrived here, so I do have quite a litter to look after.  Our little English Bulldog, Dahlia, is the biggest problem for me.  She was a little angel when she lived in our home in Leesburg, but once she got here, she developed the typical healthy Bulldog attitude and some days I find it hard to keep up with her.

I thought it would reassure all of you to know a little about how Caesar spends his days.   
First off, we eat a lot up here.  The food is excellent, and prepared by a great group of dieticians especially trained for the job.  Everyone gets plenty, and no one overeats.  The water is always running in the stream under The Rainbow Bridge.   After the stream pases under the bridge it flows out into a small lake in a beautiful meadow.  I am very much reminded of an old home I had in Montana, but the weather up here is always a perfect 72 degrees, so we are never too hot, nor too cold.
And the flowers and trees!  Wow.  Amazingly enough no one ever has to mow the grass either; it is always perfect and looks like a golf course.  Caesar tells me this fact will be especially important to his Earth Dad.

We spend the better part of every day outside, involved in whatever activites we most want to participate in.  Some events are more popular than others and Caesar will soon work out his own schedule.  On one side of the lake there is a sandy beach area and a lot of the dogs who spent most of their lives on or near the ocean like to hang out over there.  I imagine Caesar will want to visit that area as soon as possible as he has some fond memories of the beach.  We have a big screen TV in our living room area and Animal Planet is usually being watched by the less active bunch.  It's nice to curl up on our beds and couches after a long day outside, snuggle with our friends and eat snacks.

Caesar is busy trying to get a team together to do some serious tennis ball chasing.  It's practically all he wants to do right now.  I was never big on balls, so I'm happy to have him take over that department and as far as I'm concerned, he can run the entire concession.  All that fetching is just not my area of expertiese.  Although I am part Labrador, I missed the retriever part altogether.  The Labs up here are a big nuisance, running back and forth, back and forth, all day long on some days.  Caesar fits right in with that crew, believe me!

I know that Caesar misses all of you a great deal, but I wanted to let you know that although we all have memories from our Earth Lives, they are all happy ones, and since we know that at some future time we will be reunited with everyone we loved while we were Earth based, we aren't sad when we think about our old homes.  Once again, I want to reasure you that Caesar is safe and healthy and that I will do my best to keep him out of trouble while he has his training wings.

Kindly,  Marvin"


So.   Please support our new Dog Park.   Join the Friends of Leesburg Dogs group and come to the meetings.  Come to the Ribbon cutting on Saturday, - tomorrow, May 9, 2009 and join the festivities.     We are so lucky to live in Leesburg and to have this wonderful place to meet our friends and run free.

It will be Heaven on Earth.

Love and Licks,

Bob
................ and Princess Daisy too.