2023 Jan – March

Cedar and I started training on Jan 5 to become a therapy dog team. It is a weekly class at a facility about a 40 minute drive from home. The classes are two hours and in reality it’s more about training the human than the dog. It is exhausting for both Cedar and I, with much to learn, and through the week the lessons need to be practiced and reinforced daily. Hopefully we will be ready to test by end of year. The end goal being to bring some puppy love to patients in hospital, palliative care homes, and senior residences.

Early Feb, Maggie booked the private dining room at Berwick and invited us, along with our friends Moe & Paul, and Peter (Paul’s father also living at Berwick). Maggie had volunteered to be the ambassador for Peter when he moved into Berwick, and so had come to know our friends as well. Dinner was well presented by an interesting and personable waiter, and the food was decent.

A new hike checked off our list – Christie Falls

A lot of snow fell over a couple days mid month. With camping coming up, we were not very happy to see it.

On Feb 26, we embarked on a camping trip to Tofino with friends. With the unusually cold weather hanging on this year, our trip turned into winter camping. On our drive we encountered a little snow on the roads, but arriving at Surf Grove campground, we were quite surprised to find the campground roads covered and our designated sites were not accessible with our low clearance vans. We were able to choose two sites that we could get into, and set up camp. Although it was cold and wet, we were comfortable in our well appointed campers. The beach was a short walk from our sites and not crowded given the weather. We walked the beach a couple times each day at low tides and even managed a beach Bocce game one sunny day (Cedar, of course thought we were all throwing the balls for him). He loved chasing sticks up and down the sandy beach and after a day of that was ready to settle down in the evenings.

In March Chris and I attended a 4 session course at University on the Geology of Vancouver Island. It was informative in regards to geology as a whole, but a little disappointing for us that they didn’t include a hands on outing, nor enough information related specifically to our little island.

With golfing on Mondays, class on Tuesday, TaiChi on Wed, and dog training on Thurs. the month of March seemed to wiz by very quickly.