Can I Bring the Dog?

What’s not to like?

I’ve been riding a little bit more this summer, because I decided that the fact that Chico won’t even get out of the car at the horse barn can’t stop me from enjoying Dakota.
Today was the third time in 5 days that I’ve gone for a ride without Chico. When I got back and was putting the horse away, and the saddle away, etc., I opened up the crate and when I walked away from the car Chico hopped out and followed me.

He was cautious to say the least, but he helped me put Dakota back in the field and stayed out with me for the last 15 minutes of the visit.
I almost cried from happiness.
And just then our friends Ellen (human) and Maggie (canine) showed up to meet us, and all four of us went for a very nice hike in the woods. Then we sat around our cars and picked ticks off our dogs for a few minutes.
I had such a nice morning it was disappointing to remember that Monday is my vacuum-the-whole-house-at-once day.

Here’s a great pic of Chico from the PAWS trial a couple weeks ago.

I love playing agility with my boy.

We did a workshop today and towards the end of the afternoon, when we came to the start line playing excitedly with the stuffie as a tug toy, I took off the leash, and put it and the stuffie carefully and slowly down beside my pretty amped-up dog. I backed away, asking him to wait … and when I released him, he ducked to the side, grabbed the stuffed pooh-bear, and carried it over the first four or five obstacles of the course.
It made him a bit slow, but oh, my lord, cute beyond words.

That would be Tuesday April 12. Ive been distracted. Into the wet woods by the Fowler’s Mill Road bridge. Vernal run off everywhere.

Chico in orange so I can see him wherever he is.

Heard the first peepers of the year. Listen:
http://youtu.be/sDQJjXpB82w

This is a big rock by the river.

This is Chico on top of said rock.
Now that this post is up, I can start to think about updates on our activities in the last three weeks.  But first, we need a walk.

if I’m not mistaken.
Thank you Chico for taking me on a walk.

On Saturday morning we headed to the parking area near the Great Hill fire tower. From that parking place there are three different directions we can go depending on how busy it looks nearby. The fire tower is a popular walk, but when we arrived that day the parking area was empty, so we headed up the hill.

It’s about fifteen minutes,  mostly straight up hill.
But the views are a great payoff.

And there’s lots to sniff -plenty of people bring their dogs up here.

The walk-up is challenging, but not nearly long enough. So we wandered down the hill in big arcs on snowmobile trails, and walked back up the AMC Road to the parking place.
And when we got there, I realized that we had just barely beat the crowd.

I like it when we beat the crowd.

I’m the kind of woman who goes to buy underwear and comes back with a new dog toy.
At our favorite shopping-center, Settlers Green, Chico and I can visit the Jockey underwear store together. He can do his tricks and earn treats and smiles from strangers.
He had a very successful interaction with both the staff and a little girl who was shopping with her father. She was very interested in him and she wanted to pet him but she was old enough to take treats from me and give them to Chico. And she understood that she couldn’t snuggle up to him and was happy to see that when she petted him from underneath his chin as I suggested instead of on top of his head, he didn’t shy away.
There was a promotion at the checkout counter, $5 for a stuffed bear and the money went to post adoption services organizations.  Since Chico is not the only member of our family that is adopted,  I bought him one.
I present to you the evidence of his pleasure with it:

And that’s our happy post for Friday.

On Easter afternoon, we went to my cousin Eva’s (via IKEA where I got some new pans and, after 25 years of good service from the old one, a new duvet) for a few days.

Eva came home from an Easter dinner with some lamb. We carved the meat off the leg bone, put it in a pot with to make some stock, and Chico got the shoulder blade. He scraped off all the meat, ate the cartilage, and gnawed at the hard part for an hour.

It’s much more spring like down that way, with the daffodils well into bloom, day lilies several inches high, peonies showing sprouts. The staff and their dogs are around during the day in a way that they are not in the dead of winter, but the real summer crush has not yet started. There’s always been a mouse battle, what with all the seeds and tender young starts. This winter a lovely kitty adopted them. They had her spayed, and she lives in greenhouse #7, the heated one, and pays them back five times over with the number of rodents she catches.

Something is moving somewhere behind the cottage, it has him in full-alert position.

The day it didn’t rain, we took a walk at Gooseberry Island, a place I never tire of taking Chico.

Instead of starting out on the beach this time, we took the high ground, center of the island, path to see if the Japanese knotweed had started to push up stalks. They’re tender and delicious in the spring. Eva eats them, and probably sells them to restaurants for lots of money if she can get enough of them. They were not doing anything yet.

He doesn’t know it, but I invite Chico up onto objects as a way to add conditioning to his walks.

Such a photogenic guy.

I was very mixed up by the tide table I read, I was sure we were going to the beach at high tide, but if it was high tide, it was a negative high tide.

The water was no where near the high tide mark.

Chico decided to play a little Find Momo – which is a wonderful book.

Where’s Chico in this picture?

I can’t remember a time when I was not fascinated by what the ocean delivers to the coast. I could walk for hours on the beach, looking at what’s right by my feet.

This rock looks very different from two different angles.

And sometimes I can lift my eyes enough to look for some perspective.

We love Eva, visiting her, the space she gives us to do our thing or help garden, the staff, the food – it’s always a treat to go there for a few days.

A few weeks ago, we did two classes at a USDAA trial, late on a Sunday afternoon. Low key: show up, volunteer, run, volunteer, take a walk, run again, and it’s all over. We did quite well, two qualifying runs out of two, something we don’t often manage to do in one day. The classes were small, there wasn’t a lot of confusion and noise, nor was there a lot of waiting. Something I don’t always do a good job of setting a good example of how-to-do-it.

The next weekend, we played Team with Linda and her dog Aeden. We did not finish in last place, thus exceeding any lingering expectations we might have had (we agreed going in that we would have none). Chico and I had some good runs; Linda and Aeden had some spectacular ones. It was nice, two of the five classes ran on Saturday, three of them on Sunday. The previous time we did Team, it was all five runs in one day, and that was a lot for both Chico and me.

Team is a a little tricky for us. We have to find a human to team with who doesn’t care about anything but putting her dog in the ring up against the harder courses that are designed for Team. Most of the people who feel confident enough in their dogs to try the Team stuff are athletic-competitive-driven types. I’m not. I’m not in this to win. Of course I enjoy winning, and I always hope we can work well enough as a team to beat the course, but it’s not because I want the blue ribbon over the yellow or red one; or am after a ribbon at all. I’m looking for the moments of connection where Chico and I block out the rest of the world and just go fly around the course together. The ribbons can be tokens of that connection, but we can get the connection and still be out of the ribbons.

A big part of achieving that goal that is me controlling what happens between my ears. And, oh my, isn’t that so often one of the hardest parts of the life I’m livin’?

On Easter we went to cousin Eva’s for a few days. It’s spring down there in a way that it isn’t yet up here. Daffodils are doing their thing like crazy, peonies are starting to come to life, there’s enough pictures to merit a whole post, so one is coming.