Schools and Creativity

Our professor shared this with us today and I thought that I’d share it with whoever else would like to watch it. Ken Robinson is a funny guy and he talks about how we need to foster creativity  in schools instead of squashing it.

Kobe Becomes A Dog! Part 2

Number two. This just happened this morning – Kobe finally learned how to swim! We’ve taken him to the dog beach a bunch of times, and he loves the water, but he never went out deep enough where he had to swim. I think he was scared of going too deep, and little bit scared of the waves too. But today, with a bit of nudging, he finally swam! Even though it was only for a little bit, it was still pretty cool to see him doggy paddling around. It’s really strange though, at the dog park he only retrieves the softball, and at the dog beach he only retrieves his red frisbee. What a silly puppy!

Kobe Becomes A Dog! Part 1

Couple of real exciting milestones happened in the past few days for Kobe.

Number one. Although a golden retriever, Kobe never had a knack for retrieving things, he would only do it sometimes in the house. Whenever we would take him to the dog beach or dog park, he would just watch other dogs chase down countless balls thrown by their owners, too lazy to run long distances. However, when we took Kobe to the dog park on Thursday, we happened to find a bright yellow softball lying in the corner. Amazingly, Kobe loved playing fetch with it! Even if I chucked it to the opposite end of the park he still ran it down and brought it back, with his floppy tongue sticking out under the softball that was almost too big for his mouth. We are real proud of him for finally retrieving, not to mention that it’s great we found something to tire him out faster!

Adventures of the Kobe Part 1

**I realized I wrote this back in April and never finished it, but I’m going to post it up anyway

(Disclaimer: While writing these posts about Kobe, I have come to realize just how much bigger he has gotten since we first got him. It’s pretty amazing..but of course that’s what everyone kept telling us)

In hindsight, Kobe was a great puppy, still is. He’s been easy to train, friendly (sometimes too friendly) to all people and things, and keeps on loving. It didn’t take too long to get into a routine of eating and going out to pee/poo, which made our lives a whole lot easier compared to the first few weeks we got him. The only real health issue we had with him was that he would get a bout of diarrhea about once a month, usually getting bad enough that we had to wake up multiple times in the middle of the night just to take him out. After going to the vet the first two times, we got some medication that seemed to help each time. However, after the third time, we decided maybe it WAS the food that was causing it, even though he had been eating the same “Taste of the Wild” food since he was at the breeder. So, just to give it a try, we gave Kobe “Blue Buffalo” after the 3rd run-in with diarrhea, and it worked! He’s been having solid, healthy poop since then! I still don’t know why the first dog food caused the diarrhea, I guess it’ll remain a mystery.

We’re really lucky that we live in an area that has so many dog friendly places. Kobe’s favorites have to be the Nobel dog park and Fiesta Island.

 

 

Kobe (14 weeks) at an IM football game. He used to love tearing out grass...like a lawnmower

Kobe (15 weeks) could still fit in the chair

Now, he’s almost full-grown. At 9 months, he is now almost 70 pounds! There was one day we met up with the San Diego Golden Retriever Meet Up Group to go hiking around Lake Murray. It was fun to see 25+ goldens walking around and we got to join in the fun and exercise. Kobe loves to make new friends!