Ten years after a double lung transplant, Brookswood’s Richard Brown was spotted running around the off-leash dog park in Aldergrove with his pooches this weekend.
“Transplants work very well, as you can see from me out there working,” said Brown, who ran the agility course with not one, not two, but all three of his dogs during the resurrected Dog Dayz at Aldergrove Regional Park on Saturday morning.
Brown and his dog Lucky – a Lhasa Apso, Shih Tzu, poodle cross – have been involved in canine agility since Lucky was a little under one year old.
Now 16, Lucky has all but retired from the agility circuit after undergoing two knee repairs. While Lucky occasionally runs the tunnels and weaves through the sticks for sheer fun, he leaves the jumps and more competitive aspects of the course to his younger adopted siblings – eight-year-old Sugar and two-year-old Krush – both Yorkies.
Nevertheless, Lucky’s retirement and Brown’s lung transplant don’t seem to have slowed Brown down at all.
He is typically found out running with his two younger dogs four times a week, and was out running the course Saturday – his pups among more than a dozen dogs from the Matsqui Flyball & Agility Dog Club that participated in this year’s Dog Dayz event.
The canine celebration was started up again this year as a way to draw attention to the revamped dog park on the Langley-Abbotsford border, explained Vanessa Lee, a parks interpretation specialist with Metro Parks’ east area.
In addition to the small and large off-leash fenced areas located off Huntingdon and Lefeuvre Roads (at the farthest northeast section of Aldergrove Regional Park), this section of the park has been expanded to include a wilderness trail specially designed for dogs off-leash.
Based on public consultation, the need for such a trail experience was identified back in 2013, explained parks planner Lydia Mynott.
“It’s a 1/2-km tree-to-grassland trail experience,” Lee said, noting that Metro started building it last winter and wrapped up this spring.
“It is open and ready for you to come and visit with your dog,” Lee said. “The dogs and the people get to enjoy a little bit of the forest.”
The park now includes a 500- to 750-metre walking loop, with a couple circuits to pick from. It’s a new feature that Lee said is attracting a lot of favourable reaction.
