Today was a hot one, reaching 34.5°C here in the western suburbs of Melbourne.
We had to know it was going to be hot, walking out the back this morning with Bill for him to go wees I was hit with a wave of hot wind. The world felt like it had become a fan-forced convection oven.
After bumming around for the morning we decided to take Bill to the doggy beach and then to grab some lunch in Altona.
Bill loves the Doggy Beach, what dog wouldn’t? For that matter what person wouldn’t? During low tide you can walk a good half a kilometre out on the sand that is otherwise covered by water. Once you hit the water it is still quite shallow for around another 100 metres so it’s perfect for dogs to come and run on the sand, through the water and take a little swim if they so desire.
The really great thing is in all the times we’ve been there, first with Adam and Even and now with Bill I’ve never seen a problem dog. There has never been an aggressive or pushy dog there. It’s a great place for the dogs to socialise and I guess for people to do the same.
You can see some of the dog owners have come to know each other through regular visits. None of them are scared or alarmed when a strange dog runs up to them to say hello, something Bill likes to do a lot. So it’s easy for folks to say “Hi” and pass the time of day while the doggins play in the water.
Bill is a great dog, he was never socialised when he was younger, no puppy pre-school for him and unlike some other dogs, he doesn’t go to Doggy Daycare. So he doesn’t see a lot of dogs except for when he goes for walks or goes to the Doggy Beach.
There is also a huge array of dog breeds at the beach and I find it so odd how many times people stop us to ask, as they used to do with Adam and Eve, what breed of dog Bill is. I mean c’mon people, he’s a Cocker Spaniel. They aren’t that uncommon. In fact I pretty sure they are a very popular breed.
After going to the beach today we stopped in at Crème and had some lunch. They were nice enough to bring Bill a bowl of water for him to sip on.
When we get home he has to have a bath, to get all the sand and salt out of his fur. He also gets a blow dry which he loves, and brush, which he doesn’t love so much.
The best bit about going to the doggy beach: he comes home tired as and crashes and sleeps for hours.
[box type=”info”]I tried using the kit lens, the 70 – 300 with a ND4 filter. This resulted in some vignetting on the 5DMKII. Not sure why.
There was also a distinct lack of clarity in distant objects. Not the city shot, that’s happening because of the heat rising in the distance. But anything that was a bit away suffered from a lack of edge definition. Guess that’s why it’s worth it paying for the better lenses. In this case I just wanted to try out the lens for its length. At the moment I don’t have any L-Series greater than my 70 – 200mm.[/box]