Jasper's backpack

This was one of those weekends when we realized that we'd accumulated enough errands to run in Minneapolis to venture the hour-and-a-half drive north to the Twin Cities. So on Saturday morning, after Alex visited the farmer's market while I took Jasper for a run, we hit the road.

Our first stop was our favorite breakfast place, the French Meadow Bakery. Vegan blueberry-corn pancakes, yum! We also made a quick stop at The Wedge Co-op to get Jasper's vegetarian dog food and some other goodies that aren't available at our local co-op in Rochester.

Then onward to REI. We intend for Jasper to do a lot of hiking with us, so we wanted to find him a good backpack so that he can help carry some of his own food and water. REI had several options, a couple of which we brought outside for Jasper to try on.

As we suspected he might be, Jasper was extremely unhappy with this turn of events. He has a distinct dislike of bags of any sort, and his feelings were not improved by close proximity! I had to hold him tightly while Alex strapped the first one on, and as soon as we released him, Jasper started whirling in circles trying to get away from this very scary contraption. After about 10 seconds, he calmed down and we were able to go for a little stroll.

We eventually decided on the Ruffwear Approach II, which you can see Jasper modeling in the photo.



He wore it...most reluctantly...on our evening stroll last night. We'll keep having him practice with it, hoping that soon he won't look quite so skeptical about the whole affair.