Establishing a New Plymouth Dogs and House Routine

We started our Saturday by taking the younger dog, Baz (male), for a walk along the trail that is right behind the house and runs along a stream (Te Henui) that empties into the Tasman Sea. In the town of New Plymouth, there are many streams and it seems as if all of them have awesome trails to tramp (the New Zealand term for “hike”) and bike. These dog walks will be one of our routines during our 6 week house sit–more frequent and longer ones with Baz and less frequent and shorter ones with the older dog, Jess (female). Both dogs are awesome.

After the dog walk, we got caught up on laundry and started discussing what kind of routines we wanted/needed to establish. To help with those discussions, we walked to the “i-Site” to pick up information on the local area. These i-Sites are the governmental tourist information centers. We picked up a ton of brochures for New Plymouth and the region, Taranaki. After that we did a quick walk-around of their central business district (CBD), quite impressive for a town of 70,000.

Our homeowners, Allan and Dana, are members at the local horse racing association. They had given us their passes to the day’s races, so we took in some horse racing at the Park which was an easy walk from the CBD. It was enjoyable as it was nice and sunny. It is amazing how much faster the horses seem in person! After we walked home we took both dogs for a small round-the-neigborhood stroll. As it was my birthday, we did a little celebration with a dinner at home and a bottle of wine and made plans to go out on Sunday.

The only snafu of the day was when Beth decided to use the power-on remote to try to change the channel to watch the evening news. This does not work, as Bob had previously informed her. No tv that night, but we subsequently found the instructions for the tv and are now able to appreciate more than just the outer shell of the tv!