Old dogs, teaching us new tricks

Puppies are incomparably cute and incomparably entertaining, and, best of all, they smell exactly like puppies. At middle age, a dog has settled into the knuckleheaded matrix of behavior we find so appealing -- his unquestioning loyalty, his irrepressible willingness to please, his infectious happiness. His unequivocal love. But it is not until a dog gets old that his most important virtues ripen and coalesce. Old dogs can be cloudy-eyed and grouchy, gray of muzzle, graceless of gait, odd of habit, hard of hearing, pimply, wheezy, lazy and lumpy. But to anyone who has ever known an old dog, these flaws are of little consequence. Old dogs are vulnerable. They show exorbitant gratitude and limitless trust. They are without artifice. They are funny in new and unexpected ways. But, above all, they seem at peace.

Something About Harry: Gene Weingarten On Why Old Dogs Are The Best Dogs (Washington Post, 5 October 2008)

This brings to mind something that Ben Franklin said, in the guise of Poor Richard: "There are three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money."

At the Aquarium

We spent the morning in Stanley Park, a thousand acres of loveliness on the western tip of the peninsula that also houses downtown Vancouver.

Plantings along a path in Stanley Park

While there's never a bad reason to walk through a city park (especially one as magnificent as this) on a rainy morning, we were actually there to visit the Vancouver Aquarium, where one can view (and to some extent interact with) many different species of marine mammals. Like most recently built aquariums, there's action both on the surface of the water and at the underwater viewing areas. :-)

Feeding time in the otter habitat


Steller sea lion, surfacing


Infant beluga whale (age: 4 months, still unnamed, not yet eating solid food) swimming with Mama.

Related: Vancouver Aquarium BelugaCam

One good tern?

Our new roommate
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

My ornithology chops have never been strong, and are more attuned to the appreciation of Charlie Parker solos than the identification of actual birds.

But this fine feathered friend was waiting for us on the balcony of our hotel room this morning, not a bit afraid of us (or people in general, clearly.) He seemed a little too squat and stubby to be a seagull, but we've tentatively identified him as belonging to some species of tern (a close cousin)...check out the gigantic webbed feet on this specimen of waterfowl!

He happily accepted an offering of a small handful of breadcrumbs (we had the dregs of a bag of bagel chips from the plane still in the room with us), and hung out with us a while longer while we dressed for the day.