Last Saturday evening, some members of the Dogs of Instagram SG facebook group had an Insta-meet Helloween event at Marina Barrage.
This is the first event for us where:
1) The dogs are encouraged to come in costume
2) We implemented the Ribbon System
Socialisation is an on-going process for every dog. Some of us may be hesitant about bringing our dog because your dog may not be so friendly to other dogs.
Sometimes, it’s just that the dog is shy and needs more space from other dogs. If we always keep our dogs at home, they have less chance to socialise well.
Therefore we are implementing the ribbon system.
– YELLOW – my dog is shy, please approach my dog slowly(ALL dogs will start with default yellow because no dog likes to have strange dogs or humans rush to pet them or interact with them without respecting their space. So please always ask the human before approaching the dog.)
– GREEN – my dog has no incident with other dogs in the last three events
– BLUE – my dog is training in progress, please Do Not Disturb.
(All humans please supervise your dogs when off-leash and on-leash and make sure your dogs DO NOT approach the BLUE dogs at all.)
Blue is not meant to denote aggression. It is what it is a dog that is training in progress. In Donna’s case, she wore the blue ribbon because I was going around handing out ribbons and may not have the time to supervise her.
Because the ribbon system is new to all of us, we probably still need time to develop the habit of checking for the ribbon as our dog ran around. Of course, nobody is perfect so there are times when dog runs around without close supervision.
There were also a couple of incidents of dogs growling and one incident where a scuffle left a dog with a bleeding eyelid. That tells me that we had better prepare to come with a first aid kit for future events.
The Foobler
During the picnic, Debrah from Nekojam.com took the time to show those who were interested the Foobler.
That’s actually a very cool treat dispensing ball that Donna has since been playing with. I really like the timer function which controls the dispensing of the kibble within the ball, that really helps prolong the game time for this toy.
Donna, Mango, Cookie, Cotton and Jacko are 5 of 10 #FooblerAllStars chosen to test out this product that is created from a Kickstarter project.
The Foobler is currently available at SGD$59.90 for pre-order. This discounted price is only valid until the end of the month. Last two days! Usual price SGD$70. More about the Foobler on nekojam.com
The walk
The plan was to take a walk along the Gardens of the Bay East after the picnic.
Most dogs made it across the bridge from the Marina Barrage here, where we took the photo. I think I count 23 dogs in the photo below. Hahaha.
That end of the bridge was the brightest spot possible for pictures in the night. The route gets fairly dark after that, with street lamps interspersed at regular intervals.
All the better to enjoy the night view…
But what I was surprised to find was… ONE firefly glimmering among the grass. I heard there used to be fireflies in Singapore, but with the built up of urban areas, they disappeared. So I must have been exceedingly lucky to see ONE of these tinkling fairylights :D
Only a handful of dogs made it to the end of the route we were taking. Nice work everyone! Much regrets on the way back the same route since we were dead tired by then. Hahahahaha!
It was still a fruitful outing for Donna who got lots of packets of treats from the kind humans who came with their dogs. Of course, the human confiscated all of them since Donna wasn’t allowed to eat them all in one sitting. Boo!
2 Brown Dawgs
Thanks so much for joining the hop. It sounds like a really well organized event. I like that you had the ribbon system in place. We get fireflies here in late summer. We didn’t for a long time, but the last several years we have. I guess there is enough grass now. :)
Kyla
Of course Donna gets the blue ribbon.
Emmadog
Hope you had a spooktacular Halloween. Love that Foobler! My sister Katie has something similar.