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Hi, I'm Matthew, and this is Ladybug's Dogpacking Summer.
Yeah, so my cameraman partied a little too *** Friday night.
So I called up Matthew. I said come on.
Sunol Regional Wilderness. Let's go.
Matthew and I are related.
I'm his Polish grandmother.
Yeah, so we decided we would let Ladybug carry the first aid kit.
So what do I put in my first aid kit?
Well, no Band Aids. Band Aids are worthless on a backpacking trip...
or a camping trip, because they're not gonna stick.
You're gonna get too dirty. You're gonna get sunscreen...
or vegetable oil or something on your Band Aid...
and it's gonna fall off.
So sometimes I'll bring some really strong sticky tape...
and gauze pads.
And sometimes I'll bring non-sticky tape...
cause then you don't have to worry
...if your adhesive breaks down for whatever reason.
And disinfectant. I like Neosporin.
People say "Neosporin? What if your dog gets in the Neosporin?"
"What if your dog eats a tube of Neosporin?"
"Isn't that bad for your dog?"
No. Ladybug has eaten a tube of Neosporin before.
It's non-toxic to dogs.
I know 'cause after she ate the Neosporin...
We called the pet toxic hotline thing that you call...
And they told us, yeah. Dogs like Neosporin.
Tastes good to them. Who knew?
So there goes Ladybug down the trail...
with the first aid kit, and I swear we weren't half a mile...
into the hike, and she rolled in cow poop.
They have cows there. They're nice cows...
but they poop a lot, and so Ladybug rolled in their poop...
and I said "Oh Lord, please don't let anybody need first aid."
And the Lord heard my prayer,
and the Lord said "Aren't you that guy ...
who streaked the pep rally in 1975?'
But as it turns out Ladybug is the one who needed first aid.
She got a foxtail stuck inside her gums.
She was running through the tall grass.
Foxtail, in case you don't know...
is sort of a barbed grass seed pod...
and they hitchhike on animals...
and spread themselves all over...
and that's why we have so little native grassland left in California.
The grassland that you see that you might think ...
is the typical California grassland...
is mostly made up of European grasses that have taken over...
because of the way they're able to propogate.
Ladybug wasn't exactly on her best behavior on this trip...
but then we ran into some people who had some dogs...
and she's very friendly. People always ask "Is your dog friendly?"
I always laugh. I say "I'm not sure friendly is the word."
So Ladybug made friends with these people and their dogs...
and then those people got ahead of us on the trail...
'cause Matthew and I stayed around taking pictures...
and then Ladybug's behavior got a lot better...
because she was really focused on finding these people...
and their dogs. She stayed on the trail and followed their scent.
And then she found the people, and they were sitting under a tree,
and I let her run ahead and go find her friends,
and I caught up with her, and she was in a mud puddle,
and I made the mistake of going in after her.
and I sunk to about mid calf.
This is my shoe. I don't know if you can see the mud.
I almost lost my shoe.
This mud, it doesn't just wash right off.
You gotta take a horse brush to it.
I noticed that Ladybug's behavior improved when she met these people...
and they got ahead of us, and she was really focused on finding these people.
So I'm thinking on one of these trips, I'll send somebody...
on up ahead, and let Ladybug follow that person.
Maybe a person and a dog.
It's probably easier to track a dog scent than a person scent...
most the time. And take it from your Polish grandmother...
a focused dog is a well behaved dog.
There's no dog that's better behaved than the dog...
that's sitting in your kitchen watching you fry a cheeseburger.
I loved Sunol Regional Wilderness.
Beautiful park. First time I'd ever been there.
It has its shady spots, but it's very exposed...
so if you go bring water.
Bring a lot more water than you think you're going to need.
We went through a lot of water.
We went through three of these...
and one of these. This is Ladybug's.
It goes like that. The water goes in there.
We only went about three miles total. We did a loop.
That's five kilometers to you Canadians.
Oh, and print out a trail map ahead of time.
We didn't have a trail map.
There was nobody there to give us a trail map...
and the trails can get kind of confusing.
We didn't know where Little Yosemite was.
We just found someplace, we said "Oh this must be Little Yosemite."
Little Yosemite is really little.
They should call it Really Really Little Yosemite. It's pretty.
But it's really little....
compared to Yosemite.
And there's Ladybug. What do you think, Ladybug?
She's speechless.
I'm at that stage of life where the kids say to me...
"You're not leaving the house dressed like that."
"Bermuda shorts and tube socks? I don't think so."
They're so uptight.