Regulars on a North Burnaby off-leash dog-walking trail got a festive surprise this month – and some of them even got a little misty-eyed about it.
Just off Penzance Drive, few hundred metres down the Confederation Park off-leash dog trail, more than 50 Christmas ornaments add a splash of colour to a leafless winter tree.
And on each bulb is painted the name of one of the many pooches that frequent the path: Jasmine, Lizzy, Rosie, Cortez, Hank, Roscoe, Charlie, Obi, Chucky, Hoss, Gibbs, Maggie and so on.
“It’s just such a lovely, innocent Christmas gesture,” said Chris Aikenhead, a regular on the trail with his springer spaniel-border collie cross, Maggie. “You get a sense that there’s a community of dogs, really, that you’re sort of a part of; there’s nothing formal, and suddenly you see it physically embodied – every dog a little bauble on a tree.”
Behind the holiday deed is longtime North Burnaby resident Paula Candiago, who started walking the trail with her two-year-old chocolate lab, Gibbs, about a year ago.
The idea came to her in early November, she said, when the leaves had changed colour and come down, leaving the trail a little grey.
“I thought maybe it’d be a bit uplifting and give the trail some colour,” she told the NOW. “And we’re all dog people. We really love our dogs, and it’s like a small community down there on the trails.”
Candiago points to her Christmas co-conspirator, Mary Briggs, as a case in point.
“I met Mary when I started walking on the trail with the dog,” Candiago said. “She has two pointers. We’d meet up down there because she always walked her dogs, and we became friends.”
Candiago and Briggs decided they’d each supply half the ornaments, and Candiago’s granddaughters Emma, 14, and Victoria, 11, painted the pooches’ monikers on them.
They were put up on Dec. 4, and the warmth of the response has surprised Candiago and Briggs.
Briggs, who’s lived in the Heights for about 13 years and walks the trail Monday to Friday with her two German shorthaired pointers, Jasmine and Hoss, said one woman even admitted to getting a little “teary-eyed” when she got close to the ornaments and realized all the dogs’ names had been painted on them.
“I think it’s ’cause it’s old school,” Briggs said. “It’s just an act of kindness, I guess.”
For Candiago, it’s about the dogs – and the human connections that have been built around them.
“This is a thing that binds us all, our love for our dogs,” she said. “You exchange experiences; you exchange advice. You end up knowing all the dogs and the owners. It’s like a small community and you feel good; you talk to everybody. If you don’t see somebody for a few days, you wonder if they’re OK, or you ask one of the other walkers if they’ve seen so-and-so. In this day and age, it’s wonderful.”
