There was a Shiba meetup event near our city last weekend, and it was kind of a big deal. This group is not very active. The last one held was over a year ago.

When we drove into the parking lot, we spotted a cute red Shiba (redundant, we know). We hurried out of the car to meet them. The adorable and friendly girl, Emmie, turned out to be only 6 months old.

We walked together on a beautiful path flanked with tall trees for about 20 minutes before arriving at the fenced dog park. Meanwhile, Emmie and Kaiju chased each other and became friends.

There were about 8 Shibas there. A good turnout for this group! Kaiju kept playing with Emmie though.

Unfortunately, the fenced area was small, and half of it was covered with thick shiny sheet of ice. We almost decided against staying. With Kaiju’s bad knees, slippery surfaces are generally to be avoided. We saw how excited he was looking at all the Shibas, though, and we gave in. “OK, Just for a little bit”.

Kaiju was wise enough to mostly stay on the non-icy (sunny but muddy) side. We tried to stay on that side, also, so he’d stick around.

He had a great time, mostly with Emmie. We kept it short and left before everyone else. Kaiju still got a full half an hour of fun running, and was happy and calm for rest of the day. He slept like a… well… very tired puppy once we got home.
(His limping got worse after this, so we’ll probably refrain from letting Kaiju play on icy area in future)