Labrador Cooper's Leap Day adventure at Runyon Canyon...

Today I awoke to another misty morning in West Hollywood, and after downing more than a few glasses of champagne watching the Oscars last night, I thought a trip to Runyon Canyon would be the perfect way to sweat it all out.

It's been an age since Cooper and I ventured to Runyon Canyon, each of us with surgeries and injuries to recover from, and the day after the Academy Awards always seems oddly quiet in Hollywoodland so this was the perfect place for our second walk of the morning.

The funny thing is that when we drove out of our condo down in West Hollywood it was as if the fog of Old London Town had rolled in, but the moment I turned up Laurel Canyon the beautiful morning sunshine broke through.

When we parked at the top of the park along Mulholland Drive around 8am we were above the marine cloud layer and as we ventured onto the trail we descended back down into the mists.

Fortunately the salty, tangy mist was the perfect thing to keep our Labrador cool on his first big hike in quite some time.

Taking in the spectacular views, with the juxtaposition of the beautiful blue skies and grey creeping mists, was a great way to take advantage of this extra Leap Day.

I wasn't the only person with a camera today either, as the weather had obviously inspired others to take the trek up the hill to capture the misty morning vista.

To say that Cooper struggled is a bit of an understatement, he's almost eight-years-old so he's not the spring chicken he used to be bounding all over the place with his Labrador pals, so we took it nice and easy with lots of water breaks.

Even though it was slow going (lots of concerned dog owners asking if he was doing okay), we did it, and now we have one exhausted pup sleeping it off.

I have to say my calf strain doesn't feel 100% healed (although I'm happy to report Cooper's leg surgery to remove his lump has had no detrimental effect), so I think it'll be a while before we venture back. We'll keep to visiting the dog beach instead to get all that puppy energy out.

After the recent rain it was nice to see the hills looking so lush and green, but I'm sure once it starts heating up again the landscape will soon look much more parched again.

Now if only there were more off-leash dog-friendly parks and closer beaches in L.A. County that we could enjoy on a regular basis.

Bye for now until our next adventure...