May 23, 2009

A Working Weekend

Generally, weekends are a time of rest for us. We sleep in, we take a leisurely walk, and we cook up some bacon! That’s my favorite part, the bacon.  Throughout the weekend, we finish odd jobs like clean the house, mow the lawn, and eat leftovers.  Sometimes we go visiting and sometimes we take an extra-special long trip to the lake or the park or, when the weather gets nice, head up into the mountains.

But not this weekend. Even though humans consider this a holiday weekend, it’s not a holiday for me, which means it’s not a holiday for Gretchen either.  Our responsibilities have extended into the weekend with the boarding of Teabiscuit and the walking obligation of Rufus and Riley. All of their human families are out of town and while Rufus and Riley have their grandmother to watch after them during the day and night, they need extra exercise to keep them happy.

Teabiscuit only has us so she’s spending the whole time at our house taking part in the routines of the weekend, though we have yet to have had any bacon. Perhaps tomorrow.

We still have errands to run, though, and so Teabiscuit went along with us. Our first stop was in Fremont a small, funky neighborhood north of our home.

And when I say funky, I mean funky.  It’s a neighborhood of angled streets, tattooed people, and a bronze statue of Lenin who is, apparently, very important in history. How he’s important to Fremont history I have yet to figure out, but suffice it to say, any place with a giant bronze statue of a Russian leader has to be a bit funky, don’t you think?

When I was younger, I took classes in Fremont and every evening we’d drive by that Lenin statue. It’s huge, by the way, and so whenever I saw it from the car, I’d bark like crazy. “Who’s that enormous, dark figure looming over our car?” We didn’t walk by Lenin today so who knows if I’d have the same reaction I did when I was a pup.

Teabiscuit thought Freemont was not only funky, but a bit loud. We walked through the neighborhood in search of a pet store that apparently isn’t there anymore. Too bad. Pet stores are always worth visiting in my opinion.  While it may look like Teabiscuit is standing in the middle of a busy intersection in this photograph, she’s not. Nor am I. We were safely on the sidewalk when Gretchen took this photo of the middle of Freemont.  Hard to tell, but this is a pretty famous intersection of Freemont.

But more famous than this intersection is the troll who lives under the bridge. That’s where we were originally headed, but our progress was detained by a tourist bus who had stopped to visit the troll.  We went on with our walk around Freemont and then circled back to see if the tourist bus was gone, which is was, and so Gretchen posed us in front of the said Troll who, if you can tell, is crushing a Volkswagen in his left hand.  Hmmm, if the troll can crush a VW why are we standing so close?

I decided it was best not to ask questions because I didn’t want Teabiscuit to think we are in any danger. She’s been growing to trust me more and the last thing I wanted to do was shake the foundation of that trust.  So I remained calm and courageous hoping she’d feel my brave energy and wait while Gretchen snapped the photo.  She did, but both of us were glad to get a move on!

Our next stop was to pick up Rufus and Riley. Ann (my other mom) got to come with us for while we don’t have the three-day weekend off, she does.  Rufus and Riley were ecstatic to see us — all four of us!  We headed down the trail for our walk with Rufus and Riley under Gretchen’s control and Teabiscuit and me safely under Ann’s watchful eye. I wanted to show Ann the tall grass where we like to play so we hiked north (toward bear country) and sniffed a leisure path along the way.

Everyone seems to like the tall grass though for Teabiscuit it was a bit overwhelming…can you even see her? Good thing she’s black and white!

Rufus and Riley just plow through the grass sniffing out who knows what as they go…and always with a smile!

Then Ann decided to get a photo of Gretchen and me at work. She set us in the tall grass and Gretchen tried to wrangle us all into position…without much luck…

Eventually, everyone gave up but even getting back on the paved trail turned out to be a tangle of leashes and dogs. Good thing Gretchen was having fun!

Hey, where’s ‘Biscuit? Oh, there she is!

Anyone see Riley?

Wait…whose tail is that?

Oh well. We all made it back to the house somehow and everyone was ready for a nap, including Teabiscuit and me, but first we had to drive to our house.  We got a snack and then Ann, who is feeling a bit under the weather, decided to take a nap. We joined her, some more closely than others.

Well, I didn’t sleep.  I stayed watchful to make certain they were safe. Apparently it worked because soon after this shot, Teabiscuit was safely sound asleep. Ann, too.

More work is scheduled for tomorrow so tune in for the account of our further adventures. Until then…

Rubin