Archives for April 2016

Go Pet Bento – Pet Travel Bowls: A Woofus Product Review

April 26, 2016 by janet

Our journeying begins in just a few short days. Feeding three woofuses on the road will have its unique challenges. I have been looking for food bowls and a water bowl that are sturdy and easy to pack in the K9 Camper. The Bento bowls by Go Pet are a revelation to me, stylish, convenient and well made in the USA, North Carolina to be exact.

Made of human-rated, food grade stainless steel (yes, this can be different from pet-grade, believe it or not) and BPA free plastic, these sleek bowls link together neatly and securely for travel. They come in your choice of two bowl, three bowl or four bowl configurations. We opted for the four bowl of course, to feed and water our pack of three dogs.

The bowls unlocked and loaded with kibble

Each bowl holds up to 20 ounces of dry kibble. The top bowl holds 16 ounces of water, has a vacuum seal on top and a handle for carrying the whole kit. Bowls can also be used to carry all sorts of pet accessories – leashes, poop bags, treats, toys, medicines and more – almost like a small suitcase for your dog.

The only suggestion I would make for this nifty feeding gear, is to offer the multi bowl kits in different colors for each bowl or to in some way differentiate them. I lose track of which bowl is for which dog. As I do feed them slightly different amounts each, having color coded bowls would be a big help.

I am quite pleased with the compact nature of the whole kit. In a travel trailer, there’s not a lot of storage room. The four bowl set is only 8 1/2″ tall and 6″ in diameter, when all clipped together.

You can of course pack the food and water in the bowls themselves if you are just taking a short journey. Heading to grandma’s house for the day – easy peasy – send the Bento bowls along with your pup’s dinner!

The bowls may seem a bit small for large dogs like huskies, but they fit our food nicely with some room to spare. Lobo is an eighty pound dog and the bowl suited him just fine!

Where to buy: Check out these unique pet travel bowls by Go Pet online at Healthy Human Life.
Price: $18.99 – $26.99
Colors: Liquid Blue, Kiwi Green or Hawaiian Pink.
Sizes: 2 Bowl, 3 Bowl, 4 Bowl (Please note that the sizes refer merely to the number of bowls in your set – the bowls are all exactly the same size.)

At Woofus, we love to see dogs on the go – the Go Pet Bento makes packing for your dogs’ travels effortless!

An Ocean of Violets in Bloom

April 23, 2016 by janet

fiona-with-violets — Fiona with freshly picked bouquet of violets

I never realized before that the achingly beautiful phrase “an ocean of violets in bloom” from Princes’s song “When Doves Cry” is the dream landscape of my childhood. Nothing made me happier than a field of brilliantly purple wild violets. My father would mow over the field, much to my dismay, and they would resolutely grow back in short order, flouting his disregard like the delicate rebels they are. I would pick a bouquet for my mother and they would last perhaps an hour before they shrank to nothing, but they were a blaze of glorious purple while they lasted.

Prince’s music was an integral part of the soundtrack to my teen years. “Purple Rain” was the first rated R movie I ever saw, sneaking in with my older sister posing as my guardian. My friend and I would wash the family car while blasting the soundtrack to shock the neighbors (so we thought). I had a well-loved and often played copy of the song “Purple Rain” on a purple-colored vinyl single record. His song “1999” created a happy excitement for the approach of the second millennium for a whole generation of people.

Prince’s field of violets is a scene of seduction of course. Yet you can’t deny the innocence of violets, like Prince who didn’t swear or drink despite his sexy music and style of dress. I am saddened at the news of his passing. Like the violets he was gone too quickly and like them he will thrive and live on in a blaze of royal purple – his music.

Earth Day Dreaming: A Season of Adventure with the Pack

April 22, 2016 by janet

Fiona and Secret in woods A week from today we begin a long-awaited season of adventure, traveling with our three woofuses and staying in our home away from home, the K9 Camper. Our first destination? New Hampshire. I think it is a fitting topic for Earth Day today, exploring our big blue-green marble. What do I think I know of New Hampshire? Pine forests, rocky beaches and maple syrup. I know once there, we will discover much, much more!

For far too long my husband Rob and I have traveled with a purpose, usually business, and this left us no time to explore and enjoy the places we visited. Now we are like the crew on Star Trek, planning a voyage simply to explore and make the “unknown” known to us. Travel beckons, lifting the spirits and inspiring day dreams of unexplored fields, mountains, streams and tiny towns.

I have so many places in mind to visit. I don’t call it a bucket list, because that to me says that I won’t visit that place again. I enjoy going back to places I love. Let’s call it a dream list. I have yet to visit Saratoga Springs, Niagara Falls or the shores of Maine. All of these populate the dream list. Then there’s Chincoteague Island (I was a fan of the Misty books as a child), the Florida Keys and The Great Smoky Mountains of the Carolinas. All of this is just staying on the east coast.

To travel west, we need time. It takes time to get there and we want time to explore once we arrive. This requires more than a long weekend. Journeys further afield like this may need to wait a year or two until we organize our lives to accommodate it. However the dream list knows no boundaries of space or time. So let’s add the Redwood Forests, The Grand Canyon, and Glacier National Park to the itinerary of our dreamscape. And I must see the Dakotas. My father told me once of staying at a motel in North Dakota, and each parking spot had a heating device to warm your engine. Weather that cold – our snow dogs would be in heaven! We would probably visit in the warmer summer months; the K9 Camper has a heater but I wouldn’t want to test it on sub zero degree weather.

Fiona and Lobo in woods Dogs need to travel as much as we do. I know a lot of dogs, like people, are home bodies. Yet dogs’ senses are so finely attuned, that they smell and hear intensely, at a far greater level than humans. Imagine the joy they feel in an entirely new environment, with foreign smells and sounds to investigate! Ecstatic sensory overload. Knowing that a change in routine – new places, new faces – is not just acceptable, but loads of fun, will make both you and your dogs more confident and happy.

We’ve picked up some light up dog collars for night time exploring. I’ve packed a new tiny tea kettle to make tea every day, to jumpstart each day’s adventures. We’ll be sleeping in the camper this weekend (in our driveway) to further acclimate the dogs to our new holiday home. We are ready to explore!

Hiking the Manasquan Reservoir Trail with the Woofuses

April 17, 2016 by janet

This weekend we were blessed with pristine spring weather – sunny, blue skies and temperatures in the sixties. Birds sang, flowers blossomed and all was beautiful. We decided it was an opportune time to visit New Jersey’s Manasquan Reservoir with the pack.

Fiona, Secret and Lobo were ready to take on the trail. We’ve been pretty sedentary of late. This was a good chance to shake off the cobwebs of winter and embrace spring with gusto. This 1,200 acre park features the beautiful reservoir, which helps supply Monmouth County with fresh water, as well as woods and wetlands, and a five mile perimeter trail around it all.

The five mile trail features a varied landscape. We walked past the reservoir, through forest, along meadows filled with deer, past streams where wild turkeys quenched their thirst, and over picturesque wooden bridges. Hawks flew overhead. Striped bass and bullhead catfish swam in the water.

For the most part, the trail was wide and fairly even. The majority of it was in shade. It really is an ideal placed to walk dogs. I love finding shady walks because our snow dogs overheat quite quickly when they are in the sun on a warm day. We walked at a moderate pace, completing the whole five mile circuit in about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. We stopped a few times to chat with folks who wanted to pet the dogs, of course!

The park features a large visitor’s center with clean, well-equipped bathrooms. There are water fountains as well as plenty of indoor and outdoor seating to look out over the reservoir. There is a fireplace which must be lovely in the winter when the park offers ice skating, ice boating and ice fishing as conditions allow. You can rent rowboats or kayaks during peak season and there is a boat launch ramp which you can use for your own boat with purchase of a day or season pass.

We met many people and many dogs along our hike. Despite the many folks we met, the park never felt crowded. It is simply too large. I still can’t believe that we rounded a corner and saw in the distance a herd of what must be over a hundred deer. They were too far away for the dogs to go bonkers, but close enough that we could see them grazing. I have never experienced that in New Jersey in my life. I felt like an early settler for a minute, transported back in time to old Monmouth County of the seventeenth century.

I am grateful that our county park system preserves such spaces for residents to enjoy. The pups sure approved. They were so happy and exhausted from their walk, that they fell fast asleep in the bed of our camper, all tumbled in a heap!!

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