Murphy's Vacation

We wanted to get away from the heat for Labor Day and decided to go to San Diego since we miss the beach so much out here in the desert. We booked our stay at the Sheraton on the San Diego Bay b/c they allowed dogs and found two restaurants to have dinner at that also allowed you to bring your dog. The weekend turned out to be basically a vacation for Murphy!!! Here he is on the left lounging on the bed in our hotel.

We got a room on the lower level facing the marina so Murphy had lots of boats and people to bark at!

Here we are at Terra restaurant in Hillcrest. This place was all about dogs, they even had a "Doggie" menu. He had already had his dinner but we ordered him the gourmet sausages as treat (what I am cutting up.)

Tricks for treats...

We had planned to bring Murphy to the beach with us assuming San Diego beaches allowed dogs as long as they were on a leash......WRONG! Luckily we ran into a guy with his dog on our way back to the car from Mission Beach and asked him if he knew of any beaches around that allowed dogs. He told us about Dog Beach, which is right next to Ocean Beach. We thought, "ok, cool its probably a small area where you let your dog off leash." Then we got there and WOW......... if there was ever a dog heaven on earth we had found it!! Its a totally normal beach only its more crowded with dogs than people!!! And no leashes required, so its like a huge dog park on the beach! I think its a genius move by the city - it eliminates the problem of people getting annoyed with people not keeping their dogs on leashes at the regular beaches and lets the people with dogs all gather on one beach and to let their dogs run around and play all day. And since its so big you can still enjoy all the benefits of a regular beach, as long as you don't mind a dog running across your towel every 5 min and getting sand all over it!! But everyone that goes there expects that, so you don't have to apologize to anyone when your dog does it :) We had a total blast there, we were so happy to have found out about this place!

Beach babes....





Murph has always been very timid about water ever since he fell into the pool at our apartment complex last year. I was in the pool and he wanted to come to me and I think he thought he could walk on water or something, lol. Anyway, he will chase his frisbee anywhere so we started throwing it into a shallow creek running from the ocean. After many small baby steps he was swimming pretty good by the end of the day!

Surfy Murphy!!!

Tastes salty, hunh Murph?

Swimming out a little further on day 2 at Dog Beach...