The Dogs of 80/35 Music Festival

I hit up the 80/35 music festival in downtown Des Moines on Sunday. I was dogless, but saw a couple of memorable woofs with their humans.

All huskies make my heart melt. But a 7-week-old husky puppy sleeping soundly while surrounded by a crowd with the indie rock sounds of the Envy Corps in his tiny Siberian ears?! Oh my dog there's NO WORDS!
Awwwwwww!
And then their was this guy...
Basset boy hanging out on stage with Poison Control Center.
He was introduced by Poison Control Center as the dog who used to be the dog with the biggest balls in Ames, Iowa... that is until he moved.

Beer, juice or water? Mmmmmm...

Bow Wow Breakfast

Are you gonna eat that sausage?This morning we braved the rainy cold and headed downtown to the ARL of Iowa's Bow Wow Breakfast event at Brenton Skating Plaza. Catori, our nearly 5-year-old husky/ridgeback mix is an ARL alumni (Class of 2003), and we decided to take him along. Catori usually is left out when it comes to events since he tends to be rambunctious and sometimes embarrassing, although the majority of dogs and people find him quite captivating. I always joke about never taking Tor anywhere due to his potential clownish behavior, but lately he's been very, very good meeting other dogs at Petco, the vet, and on walks, so I felt he deserved a fair chance to prove me wrong.

Sniffin' some Greyhound Bootie
Catori was pretty good! Humans are always quite taken with him and vice versa and he did really good with the dogs too. Except one... a newly adopted gorgeous Doberman who is deaf. Catori and the Dobie exchanged barks (just 1 each, fortunately) while we ate breakfast off frisbee plates. Yes, I forgot to get a picture of that. We got to bring the frisbees home so we will have fun with those later.

After eating we ventured into the cold, but no longer rainy outdoors and Catori got to run and play in the enclosed ice skating area (minus ice) with a smaller, adorable, brindle hound mix girl named Sam. Sam was a foster failure (I could see why!), who had a rough puppyhood but is livin' the good life now. They had a similar style: run, playbow, then run some more. Then the Dobie came in and Catori wagged his tail but did some growling and we didn't want to risk seeing Catori's bad side so we stepped out and watched for awhile. The Doberman owner's said their guy was very submissive & still pretty puppy at 1-year-old and it would probably go fine, but Catori is prone to sudden outbursts of bad behavior and I didn't want to risk it. Hopefully they weren't offended, as it was obvious their dog was a very good boy!

Play Bow Times Two
Running Free & Fast
Sam the Hound MixBeautiful Doberman