Back in Oregon!

Both drives were uneventful.  Both times we stopped at my Mom's friend's house somewhere in central California (Turlock) and both times I gave the resident dog, Pepper, an adorable Lab-Springer? mix a bully stick in return for letting Conker stay in her house. 

As you may have read, my point-and-shoot died and I have been using Mom's camera which while it is functional, I do not like it's huge lack of options so the picture quality has dropped. The dang thing also rearranged the order of pictures.

Anyways... Here are some pictures of the trip.

Conker being "comfortable" in the car on the ride down.  It's quite hard to get pictures of Conker while in the car since I am normally driving, and I hate the flash so I never use it.

Conker was put in the backyard (much to his displeasure, it was 65 out a lot of the time) due to him being a beggar when food was present.  He also decided to be a douche and boycotted doing his stuff on the rocks so I had to walk him around for an hour or more so he could find a suitable spot to deposit his... goodies... instead of doing it in the yard.

On several of our frequent daily walks we ditched the sidewalks and crushed pebble pathways that twisted through urbania to explore the stretch of unfenced desert between the housing development and the I-10.  These adventures would have been off-leash if it were not for the proximity of the interstate to the development, as you can see in the background of the above image, so I kept Conker leashed in order to prevent him from becoming a Shiba-splat on the asphalt. 
On one of these excursions Conker excavated a ground squirrel or other rodent-type critter's home.

Conker was bored a lot of the time since us humans were often doing other things that did not involve him.  He at one point ignored me completely in favor of laying in the cool shade (since it was, you know, a boiling 70 degrees that day) near the sculpture thing I made for my Grandparent's 50th anniversary. 
And much to my surprise, he only barked at golfers once despite them and their carts being very visible from the backyard.

This post would not be complete without a picture of at least one of Conker's meals.

So here it is. Christmas food was some Honest Kitchen topped off with raw turkey fat, gizzard and heart.  Christmas also marks the day I began raw/home-cooking/alternatives to kibble-feeding Conker.
But that was not enough for the crafty Shiba!   He jumped up onto the table and took a whole turkey leg and made a mess of it on the carpet.  And since he'd touched most of it, he was allowed to keep it after I removed the bone and weird stringy things.

We dinked around in the backyard with Conker's only real Christmas present from me quite a bit.  It's now his new favorite toy since it can do everything. (Kudos if you can guess what it is.)

We met Taro, who is the cutest little dude I have ever seen ever, and his friends Rinji and Mika at a spiffy place called Arizona Dog Sports where the Shibas ignored each other and the humans for most of the time.  Despite Conker being a butthead, it was a lot of fun and I was able to get him to go over a few jumps and through a tunnel which was surprising for me.

We went on a 7 mile hike in the White Tank Mountains the day before we left AZ.  It was a load of fun since it was a real hike with rocks and scrambling and stabbings by cactus (which will be further written about later) and I wish we could have gotten in about three more of these but that just didn't happen.
Conker really enjoyed this and thankfully didn't throw out either of his knees on the rocks.

Conker was not pleased to be in the car again on the way back.  He was good about it though, and slept most of the way and was generally a good dog.

Funny thing.  My Grandparents like Conker so much (despite me telling them that he was not his full self at their house) that they wanted to keep him!  They want to get a dog soon and offered Conker a new home but declined the counter-offer when they heard that he's not only expensive but I am part of the deal if he were to stay.

And that's it for the Arizona trip!  Largely boring with a few good parts.